Liisa

“Although lacking the brocade and elements of ancient sacred ritual, a novel can be a kind of mirror room, too. It, too, is a liminal space, silent, bound by certain rituals and full of magic. The writer enters and seats herself in front of her reflection in the mirror. She collects herself and focuses her attention, and then she picks up a mask. She gazes at it and positions it on her face, and at that moment she is transformed into the protagonist of her story, looking out through its eyes at her reflection in the mirror, made strange by the face of another. It’s a complex sensation, impossible to describe exactly, but, oh, such lingering sweetness!
Then, because the world of novels is an endless hall of mirrors, that moment of transformation of writer into character is echoed by the reader when he or she opens the book and enters the mirror room, dons the mask, and becomes the character, too. This is why we read novels, after all, to see our reflections transformed, to enter another’s subjectivity, to wear another’s face, to live inside another’s skin.”
― Ruth Ozeki

“We are formed by what we desire”
― John Irving, In One Person

“Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“If you are careful,' Garp wrote, 'if you use good ingredients, and you don't take any shortcuts, then you can usually cook something very good. Sometimes it is the only worthwhile product you can salvage from a day; what you make to eat. With writing, I find, you can have all the right ingredients, give plenty of time and care, and still get nothing. Also true of love. Cooking, therefore, can keep a person who tries hard sane.”
― John Irving, The World According to Garp