Fiction structures an experience for the reader to live through. ... That is why people read: to have experiences.
Bonnie FriedmanThe antidote to envy is one's own work. Always one's own work. Not the thinking about it. Not the assessing of it. But the doing of it. The answers you want can come only from the work itself.
Bonnie FriedmanTo gain the book, one must give up all hope for the book. It is the only way the book can get written.
Bonnie FriedmanSuccessful writers are not the ones who write the best sentences. They are the ones who keep writing.
Bonnie FriedmanWe are constantly telling ourselves what we most want to know, and at the same time are deaf to it. Why does envy have such a fierce bite? Why do we fall silent or get worried just as our story is about to spring out of our control and into its own life? Whose shadow falls across the page?
Bonnie Friedman