Quotations from Writers in This Primer

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” –Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

“There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. A life of good days lived in the senses is not enough. The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less; time is ample and its passage sweet. Who would call a day spent reading a good day? But a life spent reading— that is a good life.”

–Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

“My husband. Precisely. I didn’t know he was my one great passion until he was gone. Until he was gone, my one great passion was the man I met that night at a party. My one great passion was any man I met that night at a party who could use a new adjective to describe me. I have no idea who my children belong to.” –Wendy MacLeod, The House of Yes

“Sometimes I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It’s beyond me.”

–Zora Neale Hurston

“And Lot’s wife, or course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that because it was so human. So she was turned into a pillar of salt. So it goes.”

–Kurt Vonnnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until that moment I was lifted and struck.”