“Inside of all of us there is the need and the desire to be heard, to have our innermost thoughts, feelings and desires expressed for others to hear, to see and to understand. We all want to matter to someone, to leave a mark. Writers just take those thoughts, feelings and desires and express them in such a way that the reader not only reads them but feels them as well.”

“To understand a profound thought is to have, at the moment one understands it, a profound thought oneself; and this demands some effort, a genuine descent to the heart of oneself . . . Only desire and love give us the strength to make this effort. The only books that we truly absorb are those we read with real appetite, after having worked hard to get them, so great had been our need of them.”

“I live on shameless flattery...and vodka...but the two usually go hand in hand.”

“Desire. You can't fight that; you can only fight yourself after it hits you...”

“I have always thought that all men should be free; but if any should be slaves, it should be first those who desire for themselves, and secondly those who desire it for others. Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.”

“He believes that if talent is demanded of a literary publisher or a writer, it must also be demanded of a reader. Because we mustn’t deceive ourselves: on the journey of reading we often travel through difficult terrains that demand a capacity for intelligent emotion, a desire to understand the other, and to approach a language distinct from the one of our daily tyrannies… Writers fail readers, but it also happens the other way around and readers fail writers when all they ask of them is confirmation that the world is how they see it.”

“Sleepy, I kissed the juncture of his collarbone, and we said goodnight as my heart ached the way it normally did with the power of what I felt. All combined, it was a magnificent feeling. But it was also a little inexplicable. Somehow, it worried me, the intensity of that feeling. The fear beneath it.”Excerpt From: Nicolaie, Alexandra. “Sublimation.” iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.”