“There is an argument for believing that the entire process of writing a piece of fiction is simply a thinly-controlled and highly-internalised nervous breakdown designed, with a bit of luck, to produce something worthwhile at the end.”

“When Henry Ford decided to produce his famous V-8 motor, he chose to build an engine with the entire eight cylinders cast in one block, and instructed his engineers to produce a design for the engine. The design was placed on paper, but the engineers agreed, to a man, that it was simply impossible to cast an eight-cylinder engine-block in one piece.Ford replied,''Produce it anyway.”

“Everything worthwhile ends. We are in the perpetual process now: creation, maturation, cessation.”

“If I had a nervous breakdown every time something awful happened in the world, I'd be crazier than a shithouse rat.”

“T. S. Eliot taught us you can write about your nervous breakdown, but call it 'The Wasteland' and make it big and crazy enough to hide behind.”

“from What to Read by Mickey Pearlman - A book for book clubsFrom chapter -- "How to Read":Rule 1: BAN at the outset any discussion that focuses on "Did you like the book." This is not a popularity contest, any worthwhile piece of fiction or non-fiction, no matter how beloved or detested teaches the reader something.”