Adversaria (6)
‘The parallel reader. He has ten books open at once and reads one sentence in each, then the next sentence in the book beside it. What a scholar!’ —Elias Canetti (Notes from Hampstead, trans. John Hargraves, p. 68)
‘That poignant sensation which makes you take hold of a sentence as though it were a weapon’ —Jules Renard (Journal, trans. Louise Bogan and Elizabeth Roget, December 1889)
‘There are innumerable ways to write badly. The usual way is making sentences that don’t say what you think they do. […] Knowing what you’re trying to say is always important. But knowing what you’ve actually said is crucial’ —Verlyn Klinkenborg (Several Short Sentences about Writing, 4%)
‘Our impression is that writers talk about writing too often in an unsatisfying way’ —Elena Ferrante (In the Margins, trans. Ann Goldstein, 22%)
‘A line of verse is always to a certain extent a cage for thought’ —Jules Renard (Journal, trans. Louise Bogan and Elizabeth Roget, January 1898)
‘Good people, always giving something away, until suddenly they bitterly regret it and hate everyone for it’ —Elias Canetti (Notes from Hampstead, trans. John Hargraves, p. 42)
‘One enters a book as one enters a railway carriage, with glances to the rear, hesitations, and a disinclination to change one’s place and one’s ideas. Where will the journey take us? What will the book turn out to be?’ —Jules Renard (Journal, trans. Louise Bogan and Elizabeth Roget, February 1890)
‘And worse—the end of the sentence commonly forgets the beginning, as if the sentence were a long, weary road to the wrong place’ —Verlyn Klinkenborg (Several Short Sentences about Writing, 7%)
‘Your actual affection for people overcomes you when they are no longer around’ —Elias Canetti (Notes from Hampstead, trans. John Hargraves, p. 110)
‘I mean a pale and nameless unease, as if a poorly constructed sentence could make you slightly homesick’ —Verlyn Klinkenborg (Several Short Sentences about Writing, 41%)
‘The fear of boredom is the only excuse for working’ —Jules Renard (Journal, trans. Louise Bogan and Elizabeth Roget, September 1892)
‘The bildungsroman seems to me on the right track when it’s clear that no one will be built’ —Elena Ferrante (In the Margins, trans. Ann Goldstein, 28%)
‘The memory wants to come undisturbed in its own moment, and must not be bothered by anyone who was present then’ —Elias Canetti (Notes from Hampstead, trans. John Hargraves, p. 161)
‘The little premonitory shiver that comes when a beautiful sentence is about to take shape’ —Jules Renard (Journal, trans. Louise Bogan and Elizabeth Roget, March 1895)
‘In writing, it’s impossible to express sincerity sincerely’ —Verlyn Klinkenborg (Several Short Sentences about Writing, 29%)
‘Writing is, rather, entering an immense cemetery where every tomb is waiting to be profaned. Writing is getting comfortable with everything that has already been written—great literature and commercial literature, if useful, the novel-essay and the screenplay—and in turn becoming, within the limits of one’s own dizzying, crowded individuality, something written’ —Elena Ferrante (In the Margins, trans. Ann Goldstein, 60%)
‘I desire nothing from the past. I do not count on the future. The present is enough for me. I am a happy man, for I have renounced happiness’ —Jules Renard (Journal, trans. Louise Bogan and Elizabeth Roget, April 1895)