146 Quotes by Alexander Chee

Destroying art is practice for destroying people.

Your imagination needs o be broken in, I think, to become anywhere near as weird as the world.

Your imagination needs to be broken in, I think, to become anywhere near as weird as the world.

Why is it so loud when you cry from grief? Because it must be loud enough for the missing one to hear, though it never can be. Loud enough to scale the sky and the backs of angels, or to fall through the earth to where they rest.

Reading teaches me the answers to the problems I haven't had yet, or to problems I didn't even know how to describe. And when I feel less alone with what troubles me, it is easier to find solutions. A book to me is like a friend, a shelter, advice, an argument with someone who cares enough to argue with me for a better answer than the one we both already have. Books aren't just a door to another world-each book is part of a door to the whole world, a door that always has more behind it.

Writing is work. Anyone can do this, anyone can learn to do this. It's not rocket science; it's habits of mind and habits of work.

I could stand before him, be in his arms as I was just then, and still be lost to him, some phantom of a desire he cherished more than he cherished me, the woman he claimed to love.

The animal will be tender with you, and you with it, but the animal never forgets that when what it wants for survival requires your death, it will become unafraid to kill you. And so you cannot forget this, either. It is, on reflection, good training to be a courtesan. A woman of any kind.

...you can lose more than you thought possible and still grow back, stronger than anyone imagined.