June 2006
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"I understand how frightening it is when you first go to somewhere even like Tokyo. It’s really intimidating to even feed yourself. The moment when you finally overcome that, when you summon the will to walk into a place filled with people who don’t speak your language, stare at you when you come in, you’re going to be awkward, you’re going to order food and you don’t know what it is, you’re going to do things wrong. Once you’re able to successfully order breakfast for yourself, it’s a really, deeply satisfying moment. Being lost and disoriented is good."
by
Jessa Crispin
"A lot of people feel like the only way they can demonstrate some kind of worth to themselves and others is to create a narrative which positions themselves at the top of the ladder, as in some way “Special.” We do this by seeking celebrity, by trying to break a meaningless record, by doing extreme stunts, by lining up in droves to try out for a reality TV show, by constructing elaborate websites/MySpace pages that demonstrate how great we are and how we have 12,000 MySpace pals. All of us are infected with the idea that we need to manage our identity in order to project an image."
by
Daniel Nester
The beauty of the Golden Rule lay in its purity. When the Rabbi Hillel (80 BCE-30 CE) was challenged by a pagan to teach the entire Torah while standing on one leg, Hillel replied, “what is hateful to yourself, do not to your fellow man. That is the whole of the Torah and the remainder is but commentary. Go learn it.”
by
Barbara J. King
"I first realized I was different when I was eight years old and started taking on different personas the way other kids tried on clothes. I wore all black and skulked around the house and school, acting “creepy, kooky, mysterious and spooky,” when I was being Wednesday from The Addams Family. Then I was suspended from the third grade for smoking cigarettes on the school playground when I was being Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffany’s."
by
Rachel Kramer Bussel
"I think a lot of what happens too is that especially when McSweeney's takes these books that have no clear genre and it becomes “a McSweeney's book” and that becomes the umbrella. Obviously there are some people out there that are suspicious of McSweeney's for that, but at the same time, they’re very welcoming to these other books that people want to make."
by
Angela Stubbs
“My reading in folklore and myth has been wide and eclectic,” de Lint wrote to me recently. “[I] read for pleasure, rather than research; I simply like these sorts of stories. When I write, I like to play with that material, presenting it in a different way. After all, readers can easily go and get the traditional versions themselves and I see no reason to repeat the old stories in a new setting.”
by
Colleen Mondor
"I try to write to a higher version of myself -- assuming a high level of intelligence and subtlety. And the sense I get is that there are a lot of readers who don't mind working a little and who seem to feel, like I do, that the newness of the world -- I mean the constant, everyday, newness -- may demand a different kind of fictional representation. That sounds a little like a mission statement -- what I mean to say is, it is really gratifying to feel that I can stretch myself as a writer and still find readers who will go along with me."
by
Adrienne Martini
