“Once you have suffered sufficiently, the idea of making up John and Jane and having them do things together seems utterly ridiculous…”

— Rachel Cusk

On feeling that writing fiction was fake and embarrassing in “Rachel Cusk: 'Aftermath was creative death. I was heading into total silence'” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/aug/24/rachel-cusk-interview-aftermath-outline in The Guardian (2014 Aug 24)

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Rachel Cusk 3

British writer 1967

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

01 Aug 90
Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons
Source: The Complete Calvin and Hobbes

“Things change when someone special comes into your life. Both sides have to give up things. The one thing you don't give up in a good relationship is you--whatever makes you most you. - Jim Olsten (Jane's Grandpa)”

Elizabeth Chandler (1954) writer

Source: I Do

“Pretending was like that. Things seemed to make themselves up, once you got going.”

Diana Wynne Jones book Fire and Hemlock

Source: Fire and Hemlock (1985), p. 29.

“Tho' length of time ought to have closed up my wounds, yet the seeing them described by your hand was sufficient to make them all open and bleed afresh. Nothing can ever blot from my memory what you have suffered in defence of your writings.”

Heloise (1101–1164) French nun, writer, scholar, and abbess

Letter II : Heloise to Abelard
Letters of Abelard and Heloise
Context: A consolatory letter of yours to a friend happened some days since to fall into my hands. My knowledge of the character, and my love of the hand, soon gave me the curiosity to open it. In justification of the liberty I took, I flattered myself I might claim a sovereign privilege over every thing which came from you nor was I scrupulous to break thro' the rules of good breeding, when it was to hear news of Abelard. But how much did my curiosity cost me? what disturbance did it occasion? and how was I surprised to find the whole letter filled with a particular and melancholy account of our misfortunes? I met with my name a hundred times; I never saw it without fear: some heavy calamity always, followed it, I saw yours too, equally unhappy. These mournful but dear remembrances, puts my spirits into such a violent motion, that I thought it was too much to offer comfort to a friend for a few slight disgraces by such extraordinary means, as the representation of our sufferings and revolutions. What reflections did I not make, I began to consider the whole afresh, and perceived myself pressed with the same weight of grief as when we first began to be miserable. Tho' length of time ought to have closed up my wounds, yet the seeing them described by your hand was sufficient to make them all open and bleed afresh. Nothing can ever blot from my memory what you have suffered in defence of your writings.

“I do not like having to try to make myself like things; I like things that make me like them at once and no trying at all.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

On Knowing what Gives us Pleasure, ii
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XIII - Unprofessional Sermons
Context: I should like to like Schumann’s music better than I do; I dare say I could make myself like it better if I tried; but I do not like having to try to make myself like things; I like things that make me like them at once and no trying at all.