34 Quotes by Jayne Anne Phillips

The writing life is a secret life, wither we admit it or not.

The writer's first affinity is not to a loyalty, a tradition, a morality, a religion, but to life itself, and to its representation in language.

If death is this brilliant slide, this high, fine music felt as pure vibration, this plunging float in wind and silence, it's not so bad.

If all stories are fiction, fiction can be true -- not in detail or fact, but in some transformed version of feeling. If there is a memory of paradise, paradise can exist, in some other place or country dimensionally reminiscent of our own. The sad stories live there too, but in that country, we know what they mean and why they happened. We make our way back from them, finding the way through a bountiful wilderness we begin to understand. Years are nothing: Story conquers all distance.

When the year turns, there are bells on the wind. All the old years fall on the ground in lights.

Love is the outlaw's duty.

As before, there is a great silence, with no end in sight. The writer surrenders, listening.

I wish I had more time to write.

I write line by line, by the sound and the weight and the music of the words.