The Fail Safe

“I keep trying to write novels and utterly utterly failing. I can’t make the fiction I’m writing fit the architecture of a novel.”

“I think that’s what I’m constantly trying to get with poetry—to fail at the normal way of seeing things...because when you fail at that, there’s a richness. It’s like being born again. It’s being alive.”

“It’s very important—as your book is about to come out—to know you will go insane, and you should just build that into your plan.”

“The really terrible ideas are much much closer to interesting ideas than ideas which are good enough.”

“I think the art should be a given. We are all artists showing up to make the art. But to make art that can be appreciated by a larger group of people is really hard.”

“I like crying. I live with another writer. It’s great the way that we incorporate crying as a sort of calisthenic exercise.” - Alissa Nutting

“My dream was to publish a book. That was the beginning and the ending of the dream….I didn’t even know what to dream.”

“2011 was the year that I had every terrible idea and merged them all into one project.”

“If I have full knowledge of my own idiocy, at least I’m winning in that regard.”

“For me to write a novel, I need to live in a deluded dream world where the novel is awesome.”

“I approach everything thinking it’s a failure. I’m pretty sure that’s how I approach life.”

“If you’re a writer, you write. You have to enjoy the writing process. At base level, that’s all you’ve got.”

“At the end of the day, all I can control, all I can do, is write something that I love. And that’s gotta be worth something.”

“It’s impossible to make art unless you give yourself permission to fail.”