Richard

“Tumi Jónsen has now started to tell the Icelandic sagas in a style that consists principally of casting doubt on the story being told, making no effort to describe things, skating past the main points, excusing the main characters for performing deeds that will live as long as the world endures, erasing their faces if possible - but wiping them clean, just in case. Therefore it never became a story, at best just a subject for a poem. The women carry on with their scrubbing. This was a long morning.”
― Halldór Laxness, Under the Glacier

“The French call mot juste the word that exactly fits. Why is this word so hard to find? The reasons are many. First, we don't always know what we mean and are too lazy too find out.”
― Jacques Barzun, Simple and Direct: A Rhetoric for Writers

“I've crossed some kind of invisible line. I feel as if I've come to a place I never thought I'd have to come to. And I don't know how I got here. It's a strange place. It's a place where a little harmless dreaming and then some sleepy, early-morning talk has led me into considerations of death and annihilation.”
― Raymond Carver, Where I'm Calling From: New and Selected Stories

“The beginning of genius is being scared shitless.”
― Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Church