Mary Moorhead

“For if we are our own force, we are also a servant of the forces of the dead. So we have to be bold enough to live with all the magical forces at loose between the living and the dead. That is never free of dread. It takes bravery to live with beauty or wealth if we think of them as an existence connected to the messages, the curses, and the loyalties of the dead. In”
― Norman Mailer, The Fight

“...[It comes] from so deep inside you, you cannot locate the source of the pain … The muscles of your jawbone go berserk, so that you bite the inside of your mouth and your jaw locks and the pain throbs. … Your spinal column stiffens so that you can hardly move your head or your neck and sometimes your back bends like a bow and you cannot stand up. … You ache with restlessness, so you feel you have to walk, to pace. And then as soon as you start pacing, the opposite occurs to you; you must sit and rest. Back and forth, up and down you go … you cannot get relief …”
― Jack Henry Abbott, In the Belly of the Beast: Letters From Prison

“At first it was not quite dark. I could see little trees growing out of the face of the cliff, and I grabbed at them with my hands as I went down. Several times I managed to catch hold of a branch, but it always broke off at once because I was so heavy and because I was falling so fast, and once I caught a thick branch with both hands and the tree leaned forward and I heard the snapping of the roots one by one until it came away from the cliff and I went on falling. Then it became darker because the sun and the day were in the fields far away at the top of the cliff, and as I fell I kept my eyes open and watched the darkness turn from grey-black to black, from black to jet black and from jet black to pure liquid blackness which I could touch with my hands but which I could not see. But I went on falling, and it was so black that there was nothing anywhere and it was not any use doing anything or caring or thinking because of the blackness and because of the falling.”
― Roald Dahl, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar

“Here are some of the qualities you should possess or should try to acquire if you wish to become a fiction writer:
1. You should have a lively imagination.
2. You should be able to write well. By that I mean you should be able to make a scene some alive in a readers mind. Not everybody has this ability. Its a gift, and you either have it or you don't.
3. You must have stamina. In other words, you must be able to to stick to what your doing and never give up, for hour after hour, day after day, week after week and month after month.
4. You must be a perfectionist. That means you must never be satisfied with what you have written until you have rewritten it again and again, making it as good as you possibly can.
5. You must have strong self discipline. You are working alone. No one is employing you. No one is around to give you the sack if you don't turn up for work, or to tick you off if you start slacking.
6. It helps a lot if you have a keen sense of humor. This is not essential when writing for grown-ups but for children, its vital.
7. You must have a degree of humility. The writer who thinks that his work is marvelous is heading for trouble.”
― Roald Dahl, Lucky Break: How I Became a Writer