I have a feeling that books are a lot like people - they change as you age, so that some books that you hated in high school will strike you with the force of a revelation when you're older. Lauren Groff More Quotes by Lauren Groff More Quotes From Lauren Groff I won't walk under scaffolding or under ladders. I wear things like a baseball player wears things that are supposed to have luck. I am superstitious about everything. Lauren Groff luck player baseball Sex is a good starting point for everything. Lauren Groff starting-point starting sex If you look at communal experiments in general for any amount of time, you'll find a lot of horrors: raped children, sexual slavery, eugenics experiments, on and on. Lauren Groff eugenics children looks In my totally unscientific yet enthusiastic survey of Communal Experiments Throughout American History, I've discovered that the thing most likely to break up said experiments is: Sex, all that murky, dark, dirty gunk simmering beneath human relations. Lauren Groff dark sex dirty In terms of writing, I think what most fiction writers treasure more than anything is the feeling that they're living for the length of a book inside another person. Lauren Groff writing book thinking I'm always hungry for people. Lauren Groff hungry people I once spent an entire night in a hotel in New York looking across the way into someone's apartment where nothing was happening but daily life, a phone call, television watching, staring into the fridge. Seeing how those strangers lived over that small distance and in absolute silence moved me deeply. Lauren Groff daily me silence life Sometimes immense things, like war and death and aging, are best seen from the corner of the eye and written of only obliquely, with tremendous lightness. Lauren Groff best sometimes war death Time is the currency - the highest valued currency we have now. And people giving you their time is so incredible. They don't have to like your book, either. That's a totally separate gift. Lauren Groff gift you time people Bigger stories are made out of longer acquaintance with fact and character, but I also love the tiny stories in which almost everything has to be inferred and imagined. Lauren Groff fact everything love character The greatest texts, I think, first dazzle, then with careful rereading, they instruct. I have learned from Virginia Woolf more than I even know how to articulate. Lauren Groff more think know i-have-learned I feel as if I've been so inured to failure, because I fail more than I succeed. As with any kind of fiction, I throw out so many pages; I get rejected so many times. Lauren Groff more feel succeed failure I am a person beset with fears, and one of my fears is that this thing that I will be writing for five years won't work. And the likelihood, of course, is that it won't - and that's fine. Lauren Groff i-am will work writing I write everything out in longhand in one fast go. And then I throw out the first few and start over again. By the end of the first draft, the whole thing's messy and disgusting and horrible, but you really understand the foundational stuff. Lauren Groff end start understand you We think of stories a lot of the time as being horizontal texts, beginning to end. But I love the idea of having little vertical spikes in the story, too. Lauren Groff beginning think time love A lot of books about marriage are about marriages falling apart. Lauren Groff falling books about marriage There aren't very many good models of feminine rage - and the ones that we remember are ones where women take that anger internally and implode themselves in a real way, like Anna Karenina or Emma Bovary. Lauren Groff good women anger remember We're all functions of our societies, right? And we all become who we are because of the invisible forces that mold us. Lauren Groff us right become invisible I love that he's both comic and tragic, and highly poetic but also just dirty at times. ... I love that within the world of Shakespeare's plays, the whole world is sort of encompassed in a certain way. Lauren Groff love way dirty world Marriage seems to be predicated on protecting a very deep and intimate form of mystery. Lauren Groff deep mystery marriage seems
