172 Quotes by Jenny Offill

Always the danger for me in life and in art is not to be brave. I am not a naturally brave person. I have to will myself not to hole up in my house and read my life away.

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.

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.

When God is a father, he is said to be elsewhere. When God is a mother, she is said to be everywhere.

Also she signed away the right to self-destruct years ago. The fine print on the birth certificate, her friends call it.

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.

Some women make it look so easy, the way they cast ambition off like an expensive coat that no longer fits.

You think you want the blue skies, the open road, but really you want the tunnel, you want to know how the story ends.

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.