“I felt that everything I wanted to write was somehow coagulating in my veins and making me fidgety and slow. Then after a while I didn’t have anything to write anyhow, but I still had the fidgets. I felt useless, no matter how many diapers I washed or strollers I pushed….”  – Anne Tyler,  “Still Just Writing” from The Writer on Her Work 1980, edited by Janet Sternburg

“Here’s a major point of tension in most writers’ lives: How can we rub enough with the world to nourish our writing, while keeping the world enough at bay to safeguard our creative urges?”    – Francine du Plessix Gray