A writer is an organism that will go on writing even after its heart has been cut out.
Wallace StegnerMost things break, including hearts. The lessons of life amount not to wisdom, but to scar tissue and callus.
Wallace StegnerAre you a reader? If you aren't a reader, you might as well forget trying to be a writer.
Wallace StegnerThere must be some other possibility than death or lifelong penance, said the Ellen Ward of my dream, that woman I hate and fear. I am sure she meant some meeting, some intersection of lines; and some cowardly, hopeful geometer in my brain tells me it is the angle at which two lines prop each other up, the leaning together from the vertical which produces the false arch.
Wallace Stegner