“For me writing has always felt like praying, even when I wasn’t writing prayers, as I am often enough. You feel that you are with someone. I feel I am with you now, whatever than can mean . . . To me it seems rather Christlike to be as unadorned as this place is, as little regarded.”

From Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

“The only obligation any artist can have is to himself. His work means nothing, otherwise. It has no meaning,” Truman Capote's good advice for any writer.

“Read in order to live.” Gustave Flaubert