It may be time for serious literary novelists to take back some of the subject matter we abandoned to hack novelists and the movies.

Scott Spencer

Categorized in : Movies Time Matter Serious

The only things I regret, and the only things I'll ever regret are things I didn't do. In the end, that's what we mourn. The paths we didn't take. The people we didn't touch.

regret path people

I thought of my mother (...). Freud wrote that no man is secure in the love of his mother can ever be a failure. Well, I had been busy proving that theory wrong.

busy mother men

The trouble with excuses, however, is that they become inevitably difficult to believe after they’ve been used a couple of times.

couple trouble believe

Everything creepy and Southern isn't Faulknerian, just like every... by Scott Spencer

Everything creepy and Southern isn't Faulknerian, just like everything annoying isn't Kafkaesque.

annoying creepy southern

You're all I care about," I said. "No. And me. The person I am when I'm with you, the way I see myself and know myself. That person who lives only when I'm with you.

A novelist is someone who sits around the house all day in his un... by Scott Spencer

A novelist is someone who sits around the house all day in his underwear, trying not to smoke.

novelists house trying

No pain could match the emptiness of separation, no agony rivaled the unreality of not being with her.

agony emptiness pain

I try to know as much as I can about a book before the beginning, but I never know exactly where it's going to end.

ends trying book

It was a once in a lifetime thing. I hate to think it but I bet it's true. It's too bad for us that our once in a lifetime happened when were too young to handle it.

once-in-a-lifetime hate thinking

I never felt so large and important as I did when being in love was everything. I saw you walking a foot above the earth and I remembered that was where I used to walk.

being-in-love important feet

All I wanted was what I'd already had. That exultation, that love. It was my one real home; I was a visitor everywhere else.

visitors real home

On a ship thats made of paper, I would sail the seven seas. (Just... by Scott Spencer

On a ship thats made of paper, I would sail the seven seas. (Just to be with you)

ships paper sea

It could be said that all armed conflicts are a ludicrous and shameful waste of lives, but World War I has a special place in the history of futility - a war without clear purpose, a war whose resolution would ultimately make the world a far worse place.

place war history world

I was raised in a house on the far South Side of Chicago, in a development erected on a landfill made from slag and other industrial by-products a few years after World War II.

development house war world

I surely don't think ignorance is bliss. But like everything else that has survived thousands of years of human evolution, ignorance - like denial, self-delusion, and magical thinking - seems to have its uses.

everything think ignorance thinking

By the time I was 14, my most burning ambition was to leave my home, leave my neighborhood, leave my city. I kept it a secret wish. It was easier done than said. It wasn't only that I wanted to leave Chicago - I wanted to live in New York City. And I did - for a time.

city ambition home time

Where I live, it's better to write in the morning because the night is really, really, really dark, and I do believe you'd go mad if you weren't asleep for most of it.

you morning night believe

I try to keep a steady pace with my writing. I have found that super-productive days are usually followed by two and even three days when I can hardly write a word. I used to try for 1000 words a day; now I am high-fiving myself after 500.

words i-am day myself

That's sort of the amazing thing about writing something down and then having it printed and published - it's frozen. It's there. It's set. It's in ink. It's done. Nothing changes it.

amazing nothing down writing

With writing, you really have to have faith. You have to have some sort of confidence that if you keep at it, you will get where you need to go, because there are so many points where a rational person would quit.

you confidence faith writing