Julia Barnes-brown

“you get trained early on as a woman to perceive how others are perceiving you, at the great expense of what you yourself are feeling about them.”
― Lily King, Writers & Lovers

“All problems with writing and performing come from fear. Fear of exposure, fear of weakness, fear of lack of talent, fear of looking like a fool for trying, for even thinking you could write in the first place. It's all fear. If we didn't have fear, imagine the creativity in the world. Fear holds us back every step of the way. A lot of studies say that despite all our fears in this country - death, war, guns, illness - our biggest fear is public speaking. What I am doing right now. And when people are asked to identify which kind of public speaking they are most afraid of, they check the improvisation box. So improvisation is the number-one fear in America. Forget a nuclear winter or an eight-point nine earthquake or another Hitler. It's improv. Which is funny, because aren't we just improvising all day long? Isn't our whole life just one long improvisation? What are we so scared of?”
― Lily King, Writers & Lovers

“Calla is a woman in the same way that the sky is blue. She understands that it’s the easiest identifier to slap on and she doesn’t mind it, but in actuality, the sky is an incomprehensible void, and Calla, too, feels closer to a nebulous, inexact entity. Before she is anything else, Calla is just Calla.”
― Chloe Gong, Immortal Longings

“I try to write something new. It’s bad and I stop after a few sentences. Even though I didn’t feel it at the time, I got into a rhythm with the old novel. I knew those characters and how to write them. I heard their voices and I saw their gestures and anything else feels fake and stiff. I ache for them, people I also once felt were stiff and fake, but who now seem like the only people I could ever write about.”
― Lily King, Writers & Lovers