The writer labors in isolation, yet all that intensive, lonely work is in the service of communicating, is an attempt to reach another person.
BETSY LERNERNo matter how many compromises were made along the way, no matter what happens in the future, a book is a thing to behold.
More Betsy Lerner Quotes
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I wondered if I was just the sum of my brain scan, little dots clustered in my frontal lobe. Is that where the poems came from?.
BETSY LERNER -
No matter how many compromises were made along the way, no matter what happens in the future, a book is a thing to behold.
BETSY LERNER -
Fear of failure is the reason most often cited to explain why so many aspiring writers never realize their dreams. But I think it’s that same fear of failure that absolutely invigorates those who do push through-that is, the fear of not being heard.
BETSY LERNER -
In discovering books, you became free to explore the full range of human motives, desires, secrets, and lies. All my life, people have scolded me for having an excess of feeling, saying that I was too sensitive.
BETSY LERNER -
But editors are still the world’s readers. And thus the eyes of the world.
BETSY LERNER -
Asking for advice about what you should write is a little like asking for help getting dressed. I can you tell you what I think looks good, but you have to wear it. And as every fashion victim knows, very few people look good in everything.
BETSY LERNER -
… but every person who does serious time with a keyboard is attempting to translate his version of the world into words so that he might be understood.
BETSY LERNER -
As if one could be in danger from feeling too much instead of too little. But my outsize emotions were well represented in books. [] there simmered all the feelings no one ever admits to.
BETSY LERNER -
The world doesn’t fully make sense until the writer has secured his version of it on the page. And the act of writing is strangely more lifelike than life.
BETSY LERNER -
Indeed, the great paradox of the writer’s life is how much time he spends alone trying to connect with other people.
BETSY LERNER