Jude Connolly

“The secret to life is meaningless unless you discover it yourself.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“It might be that to surrender to happiness was to accept defeat, but it was a defeat better than many victories.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“You may find the subject a little peculiar. It is a little peculiar. Writing itself is a little peculiar.”
― Margaret Atwood, Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing

“When I was an aspiring female poet, in the late 1950s, the notion of required sacrifice was simply accepted. The same was true for any sort of career for a woman, but Art was worse, because the sacrifice required was more complete. You couldn't be a wife and mother and also an artist, because each one of these things required total dedication. As nine-year-olds we'd all been trotted off to see the film The Red Shoes as a birthday-party treat: we remembered Moira Shearer, torn between Art and love, squashing herself under a train. Love and marriage pulled one way, Art another, and Art was a kind of demonic possession. Art would dance you to death. It would move in and take you over, and then destroy you. Or it would destroy you as an ordinary woman.”
― Margaret Atwood, Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing