Lynn Coady Quotes
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As a novelist, you have to pick your battles. You are tired. You have begun to experience the first ominous tinglings of carpal tunnel syndrome. You wake up in the middle of the night with both hands lying across your chest like a couple of plucked bird carcasses, dead of all sensation.
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I'm trying to get at something a little transcendent between humans. But at the same time, there's all that baggage: What's beautiful about humans is what's balanced by what's kind of ugly and petty and depressing.
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I've never understood people who treat their loved ones worse and with less respect than they would a total stranger or minor acquaintance.
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Here it is, 2011, and I feel zero shame when I tell you I would like to marry my smartphone. It is a handful of pure delight.
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I started out in the journalism program, but I got kicked out. I wasn't very good at it. It wasn't where I wanted to be ultimately.
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We live in a society that celebrates familial connection above any other kind of relationship. We are shown photos of our great-grandparents and encouraged to marvel over facial similarities. We are told to take pride in our bloodlines, celebrate our ancestry.
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When you're not sure your anger is justified, the thing to do is ask yourself exactly where it's coming from.
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A novelist's sense that he or she is 'above' a certain genre mainly comes out of the notion that the genre is somehow a debased version of his or her preferred form.
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One day it hit me: Truest friends, God bless their hearts, could not care less. They love you, they're pleased you're getting married and, ultimately, they don't give a fig how you get it done.
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Readers who claim a preference for short-form over long often tell me it's because they don't have time to commit to a book-length chunk of writing.
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The process of writing a story isn't about fair. It's about getting to the heart of your story, getting to the truth of it. It transcends ideals of fair and unfair, right and wrong.
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A dominant misconception among believers is that their atheist brethren are a slavering pack of hell-bound debauchees, gleefully wining and wenching their way through life while loudly professing their amorality.
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Here's the thing about lingerie: The only time we see it outside our own bedrooms, it is on women who are gloriously freakish in their physical perfection.
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True adulthood occurs the moment we grasp that the people who raised us do not exist solely for our comfort and reassurance. From that point on, the steady stream of unconditional love and support we've expected from them all our lives has to flow both ways.
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Keep a copy of 'Islands in the Stream' by Ernest Hemingway on the left hand side of your desk. Keep Fitzgerald's 'The Crack Up' on the right. When you get stuck, pick them up and pretend that they are having a fight, like you used to do with your GI Joes.
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That's what fascinates me about these writers' retreats: You're in these small spaces with small groups of people, and all of the sudden, the spotlight is shining on you harder than it normally is.
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Loneliness sucks. It's a slog. It feels wonderful and exhilarating when someone makes it go away. But love is a whole different ball game.
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I come from a working-class background, and I thought I had to be studying something that would get me a job.
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Now, as a writer, the whole world is your nail polish display, and what's more, you can help yourself. A thrilling, colourful array of gorgeous human peculiarity revolves before your eyes, and you still can't quite believe it's all yours for the taking.
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I think authors like me are always struggling with the idea that they should have a brand and a Facebook author page and they should get Twitter accounts. I don't know what to do with them.
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No matter how committed a marriage, there will always be other people - those we have chemistry with and those we don't, those we are attracted to, and those who shop for functional outdoors wear. The sooner a couple can accept the existence of the former and exchange a few basic reassurances concerning them, the easier life gets.
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My dad was a real man's man, and so were my brothers, in a small town where hockey is king. It's a masculine culture. It made me really attentive to what it meant to be a guy.
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I decided a long time ago to be myself and not worry too much about cultivating some kind of personality that didn't feel natural or true to who I am.
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Guys know how to read each other's signals. They know how to telegraph love for one another without throwing their arms around one another.