What I try to capture as a writer is the feeling of being alive, of being awake. Jenny Offill More Quotes by Jenny Offill More Quotes From Jenny Offill And that phrase - 'sleeping like a baby.' Some blonde said it blithely on the subway the other day. I wanted to lie down next to her and scream for five hours in her ear. Jenny Offill sleep baby lying But now it seems possible that the truth about getting older is that there are fewer and fewer things to make fun of until finally there is nothing you are sure you will never be. Jenny Offill fewer getting-older fun One of the odd things about being a writer is that you never reach a point of certainty, a point of mastery where you can say, Right. Now I understand how this is done. Jenny Offill odd-things mastery done The reason to have a home is to keep certain people in and everyone else out. Jenny Offill reason home people My plan was to never get married. I was going to be an art monster instead. Women almost never become art monsters because art monsters only concern themselves with art, never mundane things. Nabokov didn't even fold his own umbrella. Vera licked his stamps for him. Jenny Offill married monsters art I had thought loving two people so much would straighten it. Jenny Offill two people These bits of poetry that stick to her like burrs. Jenny Offill burrs bits sticks My plan was to never get married. I was going to be an art monster instead. Jenny Offill married monsters art To live in a city is to be forever flinching. Jenny Offill cities forever A few nights later, I secretly hope that I might be a genius. Why else can no amount of sleeping pills fell my brain? But in the morning my daughter asks me what a cloud is and I cannot say. Jenny Offill daughter sleep morning The Buddhists say there are 121 states of consciousness. Of these, only three involve misery or suffering. Most of us spend our time moving back and forth between these three. Jenny Offill buddhist suffering moving You think you want the blue skies, the open road, but really you want the tunnel, you want to know how the story ends. Jenny Offill tunnels blue thinking The only love that feels like love is the doomed kind. (Fun fact.) Jenny Offill like-love fun love-is A thought experiment courtesy of the Stoics. If you are tired of everything you possess, imagine that you have lost all these things. Jenny Offill courtesy tired imagine Some women make it look so easy, the way they cast ambition off like an expensive coat that no longer fits. Jenny Offill coats ambition looks For years, I kept a Post-it note above my desk. WORK NOT LOVE! was what it said. It seemed a sturdier kind of happiness. Jenny Offill notes kind years Also she signed away the right to self-destruct years ago. The fine print on the birth certificate, her friends call it. Jenny Offill birth self years When God is a father, he is said to be elsewhere. When God is a mother, she is said to be everywhere. Jenny Offill mother said father I like to write from midnight to dawn with great stores of candy and Red Bull laid in... I'm not sure why I have the work habits of a 20-year-old coder, but no matter how many times I set up a more reasonable schedule, I always fall back to this. Jenny Offill great red work fall I can be bolder on the page, as a character. I can gnash my teeth, I can scream and yell, in a way that I'm perhaps too timid to do in real life. Jenny Offill i-can character life way