Judith Guest Quotes

It's true that every day away from work requires two more days to get back into it.

I've never been one to tear the social fabric.

People have a right to be the way they are.

People use people according to their own needs. Or don't use them. When a primary need is one of safety.

You have to live your life according to what comforts you, not what the rest of your family thinks you ought to be doing.

The monotonous beauty of wealth.

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

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

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

She hands him his coffee; crosses to the doorway; motes of dust flutter nervously in her wake.

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.

Some people have an unrealistic expectation when it comes to getting published; the fact is most publishers will turn down your work which is why you need to be persistent.

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

Choir is the one time of day when he lets down his guard; there is peace in the strict concentration that Faughnan demands of all of them, in the sweet dissonance of voices in chorus. He has sung in here since he was a freshman. Faughnan is a serious student of music; also, a perfectionist of the sternest sort, who cares about nobody, about nothing other than the music. His shirt sleeves rolled to the elbows, his tie undone, he drives them. Every minute of every hour that is spent there, they work, and there is only one way to prove yourself. You sing, and sing, and sing. All else is unimportant.

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

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?

A little advice about feelings kiddo; don't expect it always to tickle." Dr, Berger

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!

Make peace with what is.

Jesus but people got weird when they lived alone.

It has always been easier to believe himself capable of evil than to accept evil in others.

My success is not who I am.

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

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.

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

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.

Everything seems excessive, now, and too intense, too important.

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

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

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