Judith Guest Quotes

Writers don't write to inform other people, they write to find out something themselves.

...let the emotional weight of a scene rest on the dialogue wherever possible. This is the easy way to avoid overinterpretation, which seems to be what turns a scene from sympathetic to sentimental.

I can write for a long time on one novel and not get tired.

With my friends, I don't feel pressure to be someone other than who I am.

People that keep stiff upper lips find that it's hard to smile.

The small seed of despair cracks open and sends experimental tendrils upward to the fragile skin of calm holding him together.

Two separate, distinct personalities, not separate at all, but inextricably bound, soul and body and mind, to each other, how did we get so far apart so fast?

Depending on the reality one must face, one may prefer to opt for illusion.

I think living the blessed life is the luck of the draw.

I notice when I'm on these trips, I read like mad. It's the only thing that seems to center me, bring me back to remembering who I am. Or forgetting who I am!

Depression is not sobbing and crying and giving vent, it is plain and simple reduction of feeling.

Riding the train gives him too much time to think, he has decided. Too much thinking can ruin you.

Haven't lost your sense of humor after all but your sense of identity is what seems to have been misplaced. No. Wrong. You don't lose what you never had.

For me being depressed means you can spend all day in bed, and still not get a good night's rest.

I am also working on a couple of short stories for anthologies. This is new to me and Im enjoying it.

The 'creator' and the 'editor' - two halves of the writer whole - should sleep in separate rooms.

. . . crazy world or maybe it's just the view we have of it, looking through a crack in the door, never being able to see the whole room, the whole picture.

Sometimes you are being interviewed by someone and you think, if I knew this person they'd be my best friend. Other times you're being interviewed by a complete jerk.

To have a reason to get up in the morning, it is necessary to have some kind of guiding principle. A belief of some kind

Life is not a series of pathetic, meaningles actions. Some of them are so far from pathetic, so far from meaningless as to be beyond reason, maybe beyond forgiveness.

Ours was not a political household, when I was growing up.

And if you ever do a survey, you'll find that people prefer illusion to reality, ten to one. Twenty, even.

Some people with awful cards can be successful because of how they deal with the tragedies they're handed, and that seems courageous to me.

Autonomy is the whole thing; it's what unhappy people are missing. They have given the power to run their lives to other people.

Feeling is not selective, I keep telling you that. You can’t feel pain, you aren’t gonna feel anything else, either.

Geez, if I could get through to you, kiddo, that depression is not sobbing and crying and giving vent, it is plain and simple reduction of feeling. Reduction, see? Of all feeling. People who keep stiff upper lips find that it's damn hard to smile.

Make notes—I’ve lost more material than I’ve ever written. Contrary to popular opinion, it’s not still up there in one’s brain. It’s in outer space and it ain’t coming back.