Literary Pain Quotes

The second was some rather bad poetry, but it was short, and I forced my way through by gritting my teeth and occasionally closing one eye so as not to damage the entirety of my brain.

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us.

Yes. To write a novel is to risk my sanity. The deeper I get into the suffering and conflict of the characters, into the very situations and thoughts and feelings that make the novel worthwhile, the worse I feel, and the more likely I am to be severely depressed when the book is finished. There is no avoiding this: it is the result of attempting to tell all you know, to reach for the stars, to write what matters.

It is impossible to read for pleasure from something to which you are both father and mother, born in such travail that the writer despises the thing that enslaved him.

Literature is a toil and a snare, a curse that bites deep.

Only another writer can know how much damage writing a novel can do to you. It's an unnatural activity to sit at a desk and squeeze words out of yourself.

There is probably no hell for authors in the next world - they suffer so much from critics and publishers in this.

My favorite movies are gory horror films. I love Faulkner. I wanted to see the most painful things possible.