“If, all our thoughts were edited, good words would come forth, and be received by a compassionate ear.”

“You know, there's something heartsick about parties like this. Look at us. We're all pretending to be smart, as if intelligence were the cure for our anguish.”

“Nothing can be rightly known, if God be not known; nor is any study well managed, nor to any great purpose, if God is not studied. We know little of the creature, till we know it as it stands related to the Creator: single letters, and syllables uncomposed, are no better than nonsense. He who overlooketh him who is the 'Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending,' and seeth not him in all who is the All of all, doth see nothing at all. All creatures, as such, are broken syllables; they signify nothing as separated from God. Were they separated actually, they would cease to be, and the separation would be annhiliation; and when we separate them in our fancies, we make nothing of them to ourselves. It is one thing to know the creatures as Aristotle, and another thing to know them as a Christian. None but a Christian can read one line of his Physics so as to understand it rightly. It is a high and excellent study, and of greater use than many apprehend; but it is the smallest part of it that Aristotle can teach us.”

“Write poorly.Suck.Write Awful.Terribly.Frightfully.Don’t care.Turn off the inner editor.Let yourself write.Let it flow.Let yourself fail.Do something crazy.Write 50,000 words in the month of November.I did it.It was fun.It was insane.It was 1,667 words per day.It was possible, but you have to turn off the inner critic off completely.Just write.Quickly.In bursts.With joy.If you can’t write, run away.Come back.Write again.Writing is like anything else.You won’t get good at it immediately.It’s a craft.You have to keep getting better.You don’t get to Juilliard unless you practice.You want to get to Carnegie Hall?Practice. Practice. Practice ..or give them a lot of money.Like anything else it takes 10,000 hours to get to mastery.Just like Malcolm Gladwell says.So write.Fail.Get your thoughts down.Let it rest.Let is marinate.Then edit, but don’t edit as you type.That just slows the brain down.Find a daily practice.For me it’s blogging.It’s fun.The more you write the easier it gets.The more it is a flow, the less a worry.It’s not for school, it’s not for a grade, it’s just to get your thoughts out there.You know they want to come out.So keep at it.Make it a practice.Write poorly.Write awfully.Write with abandon and it may end up being really really good.”

“My God, the corruptions of literature. It put all these notions into our heads.”

“Of course they were children, he knew that, and that wasn't it. They gave off a terrible glow. They had the blank glow of angels. They lived smack in the middle of reality and never gave it a minute's thought. They'd never felt like actors. They'd never been sick with irony. The long tunnel of their thoughts had never swallowed them. They'd never had restless sleepless nights, the urgent wordless unexplainable wrestling matches with the shadowy bands of soul-thieves. God damn it, Sault thought. Everybody gets to be happy except me. Saul heard Anne's cries. The sun was sweating all over his forehead. He felt faint, and Jewish, as usual. He turned on the radio. It happened to be tuned to a religious station and some choir was singing "When Jesus Wept.”

“His was the kind of beauty for which you would pay the price of a lifetime of sorrow and all the varieties of rage. Eventually, you would have to go to church to get rid of him.”