Paul Hoy

“Though possibly it–the answer–is simple: it is just low-life, some coldness in us all, some helplessness that causes us to misunderstand life when it is pure and plain, makes our existence seem like a border between two nothings, and makes us no more or less than animals who meet on the road-watchful, unforgiving, without patience or desire.”
― Richard Ford, Rock Springs

“She had rooms in her mind that she would not look into.”
― Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose

“I did not want to live out my life in the strennous effort to hold a ghost world together. It was plain as the stars that time herself moved in grand tidal sweeps rather than the tic-tocks we suffocate within, and that I must reshape myself to fully inhabit the earth rather than dawdle in the sump of my foilbles...”
― Jim Harrison, Julip

“The main thing is to write
for the joy of it. Cultivate a work-lust
that imagines its haven like your hands at night
dreaming the sun in the sunspot of a breast.
You are fasted now, light-headed, dangerous.
Take off from here.”
― Seamus Heaney, Station Island