"The Muse's Tragedy"

"Then there set in a kind of Arctic winter. I crawled into myself as into a snow hut."

--Edith Wharton, "The Muse's Tragedy"

"The Muse's Tragedy"

"You can't imagine the excuses a woman will invent for a man's not telling her that he loves her--pitiable arguments that she would see through at a glance if any other women used them!"

--Edith Wharton, "The Muse's Tragedy"

American Pastoral, pg 63

"Writing turns you into somebody who's always wrong. The illusion that you may get it right someday is the perversity that draws you on."

--Philip Roth, American Pastoral, pg 63

American Pastoral, pg 35

"The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that--well, lucky you."

Philip Roth, American Pastoral, pg 35