"Even sad stories are company.

And perhaps that's why you might read such a chronicle, to look into a

companionable darkness that isn't yours."

 

-Mark Doty,

Firebird

 

"A story untold could be the one that kills you."

-Pat Conroy,

Beach Music

 

"I wanted to be able to bear this. I have tried to."

-Ovid

 

"The child might threaten the

adult she had become."

A. Brookner

 

"When you realize you are lost,

the mind is instantly animated with a kind

of stoic cheerfulness. How much worse

could it be, you think."

-John Cheever,

Journals

 

 

 

When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.

When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.

  --Szymborska

 

 

I'm waiting'/for my man/ got twenty-six dollars in my hand/ he's never early/he's always late/ the first thing you learn/ is you always gotta' wait'

Lou Reed, Waiting for the Man

 

 

"Remember the days of moments past.

they bloom like roses

then break like glass"

-Scott M. Davis

 

"Then Good night," said Honor,

With my final breath.

"Farewell" whispered Life.

"Have some wine" smiled death."

Scott M.davis

 

Trouble
Oh trouble set me free
I have seen your face
And it's too much too much for me

Trouble
Oh trouble can't you see
You're eating my heart away
And there's nothing much left of me

I've drunk your wine
You have made your world mine
So won't you be fair
So won't you be fair

I don't want no more of you
So won't you be kind to me
Just let me go where
I'll have to go there


Trouble
Oh trouble can't you see
You have made me a wreck
Now won't you leave me in my misery

I've seen your eyes
and I can see death's disguise
Hangin' on me
Hangin' on me

I'm beat, I'm torn
Shattered and tossed and worn
Too shocking to see
Too shocking to see

Trouble
Oh trouble move from me
I have paid my debt
Now won't you leave me in my misery

Cat Stevens "Trouble"

 

 

There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are. — W. Somerset Maugham

 

 

When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue
Could scarcely cry 'weep! 'weep! 'weep! 'weep!
So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep.

W. Blake The Chimney Sweeper

"When I'm manic, my senses are so heightened, I'm so awake and alert, that my eyelashes fluttering on the pillow sound like thunder." Andy Behrman, "Electroboy"

 

 

"It's being a grown up, which I never figured out how to do, scrubbing the tub, and remembering to eat and shampoo my hair. It's the basics: I can write a whole book, but I cannot handle the basics." Elizabeth Wurtzel, "More, Now, Again"

 

"Bettin' on another long shot
'Cause the sure shot's done passed
You walk along straight and narrow
But you're barefoot in broken glass...

You sleep a lot where the sunlight
Stays locked up in a hole
You can't stand to let the light in
'Cause your heart may wanna roam


Swervin' on the bad side of luck
Waitin' on a sign of sunrise

You can't help but wonder
How you lost all control
I guess you just couldn't keep up
With the wild horse that you stole

 

Ryan Bingham Self-righteous Wall from "Junky Star"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build.”
-Anne Sexton

 

"I take one one one cause you left me and
Two two two for my family and
3 3 3 for my heartache and
4 4 4 for my headaches and
5 5 5 for my lonely and
6 6 6 for my sorrow and
7 7 for no tomorrow and
8 8 I forget what 8 was for and
9 9 9 for a lost god and
10 10 10 10 for everything everything everything everything"

"Kiss Off" Gordon Gano

 

"Intoxicated by the madness/ I'm in love with my sadness." Billy Corgen

 

"It should surprise no one that the life of the writer--such as it is--is colorless to the point of sensory deprivation. Many writers do little else but sit in small rooms recalling the real world. This explains why so many books describe the author's childhood. A writer's childhood may well have been the occasion of his only firsthand experience."-Annie Dillard, "the Writing Life"

 

 

"In my lifetime I was to write only one book, this would be the one. Just as the past Lingers in the present, all my writings after night, including those that deal with biblical, Talmudic, or Hasidic themes, profoundly bear it's stamp, and cannot be understood if one has not read this very first of my works. Why did I write it? Did I write it so as not to go mad or, on the contrary, to go mad in order to understand the nature of the madness, the immense, terrifying madness that had erupted in history and in the conscience of mankind? Elie Wiesel, "Night"

 

 

"Reading at meals is considered rude in polite society, but if you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second-to-least of your concerns. The least of all should be polite society and what it expects. If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered, anyway" Stephen King, "On Writing"

 

 Sylvia Plath

 

"You’re growing up. And rain sort of remains on the branches of a tree that will someday rule the Earth. And it’s good that there is rain. It clears the month of your sorry rainbow expressions, and it clears the streets of the silent armies… so we can dance.”
— Jim Carrol

 

"I like to get ten pages a day which amounts to 2,000 words. That's 180,000 words over a three month span, a goodish length for a book--something in which the reader can get happily lost, if the tale is well done and stays fresh." Stephen King, "On Writing Well"

 

 

"An American Night", Morrisson

 

"Appealing workplaces are to be avoided. One wants a room with no view, so imagination can meet memory in the dark"-Annie Dillard, "The Writing Life"

 

"Monks and writers lead very similar lives. We spend our best time in retreat from the world, anxious to make something of our rich experience." Rougeau, a Benedictine Monk

 

Do you like what you're doing/would you do it some more/or will you stop once and wonder what you're doing it for?"-Nick Drake

" Artists are makers, not just mouthers of slippery discourse. Language, the poets' medium, should not be privileged over the protean materials of other artists, who work in pigments, stone, metals and fibers. Poets are fabricators and engineers, pursuing a craft...every reading is partial, but that does not absolve us from the quest for meaning,which defines us as a species" - Camile Pagli "Break, Blow, Burn"

"We might die from Addication, but we sure killed all the pain..." Bright Eyes

"Okay so enough about me..now what do you think about me?"-Wurtzel

 

"An American Night", Morrison

"There is no power on earth that can loosen a man's grip on his own throat"-Terry Southern

"If your eye is sound, your whole body will be
filled with light; but if your eye is bad, your
whole body will be in darkness. And if the
light in you is darkness, how great will the
darkness be" -Mathew 6:22-23

"In certain trying circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity furnishes a relief denied even to prayer"- Mark Twain

"The written word is weak. Many people prefer life to it. Life gets your blood going, and it smells good. Writing is mere writing, literature is mere. It appeals only to the subtlest senses--the imagination's vision, and the imagination's hearing--and the moral sense, and the intellect. This writing that you do, that so thrills you, that so rocks and exhilarates you, as if you were dancing next to the band, is barely audible to anyone else" Annie Dillard, "The Writing Life"

"Intoxicated by the madness, I'm in love with my sadness" Billy Corgan

"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood and I, I took the road Less travelled by..." R. Frost

"Addicts learn at the speed of pain" Unknown