I think when you are truly stuck, when you have stood still in the same spot for too long, you throw a grenade in exactly the spot you were standing in, and jump, and pray. It is the momentum of last resort. Renata Adler More Quotes by Renata Adler More Quotes From Renata Adler Idle people are often bored and bored people, unless they sleep a lot, are cruel. It is not accident that boredom and cruelty are great preoccupations in our time. Renata Adler boredom blessing sleep That 'writers write' is meant to be self-evident. People like to say it. I find it is hardly ever true. Writers drink. Writers rant. Writers phone. Writers sleep. I have met very few writers who write at all. Renata Adler phones sleep writing Bored people, unless they sleep a lot, are cruel. Renata Adler reading sleep book Fear . . . is forward. No one is afraid of yesterday. Renata Adler fear yesterday My capacity for having a good time exists. It surfaces, however, on odd occasions. Renata Adler good-times odd capacity My dislike has no consequences. It accrues only in my mind—like preserves on a shelf or guns zeroing in, and never firing. Renata Adler shelves gun mind No one ever confides a secret to one person only. No one destroys all copies of a document. Renata Adler copies persons secret Self-pity” is just sadness, I think, in the pejorative. Renata Adler sadness self thinking Being neurotic seemed to be a kind of wild card, an all-purpose explanation. Renata Adler kind purpose cards Sanity ... is the most profound moral option of our time. Renata Adler sanity moral profound It is always self-defeating to pretend to the style of a generation younger than your own; it simply erases your own experience in history. Renata Adler fashion self inspirational The whole magic of a plot requires that somebody be impeded from getting something over with. Renata Adler magic plot whole Speech, tennis, music, skiing, manners, love- you try them waking and perhaps balk at the jump, and then you're over. You've caught the rhythm of them once and for all, in your sleep at night. The city, of course, can wreck it. So much insomnia. So many rhythms collide. The salesgirl, the landlord, the guests, the bystanders, sixteen varieties of social circumstance in a day. Everyone has the power to call your whole life into question here. Too many people have access to your state of mind. Some people are indifferent to dislike, even relish it. Hardly anyone I know. Renata Adler love-you insomnia sleep Lyda was an exuberant, even a dramatic gardener.... She was always holding up a lettuce or a bunch of radishes with an air of resolute courage, as though she had shot them herself. Renata Adler dramatic garden air The writer has a grudge against society, which he documents with accounts of unsatisfying sex, unrealized ambition, unmitigated loneliness, and a sense of local and global distress. Renata Adler loneliness ambition sex The style of flirtation specific to classrooms was of service to the students all their lives. Renata Adler classroom style students I took a little celebrational nap. Renata Adler naps littles People have been modeling their lives after films for years, but the medium is somehow unsuited to moral lessons, cautionary tales or polemics of any kind. Renata Adler kindness people years I love the laconic. Clearly, I am not of their number. Renata Adler laconic numbers The writer has a grudge against society, which he documents with accounts of unsatisfying sex, unrealized ambition, unmitigated loneliness, and a sense of local and global distress. The square, overpopulation, the bourgeois, the bomb and the cocktail party are variously identified as sources of the grudge. There follows a little obscenity here, a dash of philosophy there, considerable whining overall, and a modern satirical novel is born. Renata Adler loneliness philosophy sex
