Carolyn See
Carolyn See was the author of ten books, including the memoir, Dreaming: Hard Luck and Good Times in America, an advice book on writing, Making a Literary Life, and the novels There Will Never Be Another You and The Handyman.
She was the Friday-morning reviewer for The Washington Post, and she has been on the boards of the National Book Critics Circle and PENWest International. She won both the Guggenheim Fellowship and the Getty Center fellowship. She lived in Pacific Palisades, California.
See also wrote books under the pen name Monica Highland, a name she shared with two others, her daughter Lisa See and her longtime companion, John Espey, who died in 2000.
See was known for writing novels set in Los Angeles and co-edited books that revolve around the city, including a book of short stories, LA Shorts, and the pictorial books Santa Monica Bay: Paradise by the Sea: A Pictorial History of Santa Monica, Venice, Marina Del Rey, Ocean Park, Pacific Palisades, Topanga & Malibu, and The California Pop-Up Book, which celebrates the city's unique architecture.
“Wake up! Keep waking up! Wake up more and more often!”
“You can go a surprisingly long time without figuring out the kind of person you are and in what direction your life is taking you.”
“It's my experience that you first feel the impulse to write in your chest. It's like falling in love, only more so. It feels like something criminal. It feels like unspeakably wild sex. So, think: When you feel the overpowering need to go out and find some unspeakably wild sex, do you rush to tell your mom about it?”
“Everyone in the world should read this book... We should read it to learn about the world and what it means to be human. ”
“Every word a woman writes changes the story of the world, revises the official version.”