Excellence is being able to perform at a high level over and over again. You can hit a half-court shot once. That's just the luck of the draw. If you consistently do it... that's excellence.


Jay-Z

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though the sun burns my leaves.

MARK Z. DANIELEWSKI
We all create stories to protect ourselves.
MARK Z. DANIELEWSKI
Little solace comes
to those who grieve
when thoughts keep drifting
as walls keep shi...
MARK Z. DANIELEWSKI
It may be the wrong decision, but fuck it, it's mine.
MARK Z. DANIELEWSKI
This much I'm certain of: it doesn't happen immediately. You'll finish [the book] and that will be t...
MARK Z. DANIELEWSKI
Who has never killed an hour? Not casually or without thought, but carefully: a premeditated murder ...
MARK Z. DANIELEWSKI
I'm a big believer in big books, and that doesn't necessarily mean long books.
MARK Z. DANIELEWSKI
Passion has little to do with euphoria and everything to do with patience. It is not about feeling g...
MARK Z. DANIELEWSKI
New Orleans cuisine is Creole rather than Cajun.
POPPY Z. BRITE
the seriousness of emotional deprivation:

It is not difficult to understand how children ...
MARK Z. DANIELEWSKI
All weakness tends to corrupt, and impotence corrupts absolutely.
EDGAR Z. FREIDENBERG
My childhood may have been more demented than most, because I learned to read very early and was all...
POPPY Z. BRITE
Yeah, I think A Confederacy of Dunces is probably the perfect New Orleans book.
POPPY Z. BRITE
What we must decide is perhaps how we are valuable, rather than how valuable we are.
EDGAR Z. FRIEDENBERG
The age of a woman doesn't mean a thing. The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles.
SIGMUND Z. ENGEL
You can power the entire U.S. vehicle fleet with 73,000 to 145,000 five-megawatt wind turbines. That...
MARK Z. JACOBSON
In high school I was the dog, always, and I never have felt comfortable or right in my body, and par...
POPPY Z. BRITE
This is the point being missed by readers who lament Liquor's lack of hot sex scenes, probably b...
POPPY Z. BRITE
In France, for instance, one magazine writer was convinced that On The Road had been a huge influenc...
POPPY Z. BRITE
No one has ever done anything too bad to be forgiven
R. Z. SHEPPARD
At some point you have to start letting people save their own life.
POPPY Z. BRITE
An able practitioner of glitz lit.
R. Z. SHEPPARD
Physics depends on a universe infinitely centred on an equals sign.
MARK Z. DANIELEWSKI
Then no matter where you are, in a crowded restaurant or on some desolate street or even in the comf...
MARK Z. DANIELEWSKI
Not only do most people accept violence if it is perpetrated by legitimate authority, they also rega...
EDGAR Z. FRIEDENBERG
An old man loved is winter with flowers.
EDGAR Z. FRIEDENBERG
[Ken] Kesey practices what has come to be known as gonzo journalism. The reporter, often intoxicated...
R. Z. SHEPPARD
His reserve of disdain appears endless. He could no sooner shut it off than a vampire could forgo hi...
R. Z. SHEPPARD
The 'teenager' seems to have replaced the Communist as the appropriate target for public controversy...
EDGAR Z. FRIEDENBERG
The short story is like an old friend who calls whenever he is in town. We are happy to hear from it...
R. Z. SHEPPARD
It was like discovering that your innermost fires and terrors, the things you believed no one else c...
POPPY Z. BRITE
In the end Navidson is left with one page and one match. For a long time he waits in darkness and co...
MARK Z. DANIELEWSKI
The San Francisco Bay Area [is] the playpen of countercultures.
R. Z. SHEPPARD
Two kisses in one kiss was all it took, a comfort, a warmth, perhaps temporary, perhaps false, but r...
MARK Z. DANIELEWSKI
Youth always tries to fill the void, an old man learns to live with it.
MARK Z. DANIELEWSKI
You could power America with renewables from a technical and economic standpoint. The biggest obstac...
MARK Z. JACOBSON
...life's big. If you can't fix it, give it a spin.
MARK Z. DANIELEWSKI
And I can't think of a reason I'd ever use a pseudonym, as I wouldn't want to publish so...
POPPY Z. BRITE
Because the enormous narcissism of their parents deprived Will and Tom of suitable role models, both...
MARK Z. DANIELEWSKI
Let the night come. We are not afraid.
POPPY Z. BRITE
The last dying days of summer, fall coming on fast. A cold night, the first of the season, a change ...
POPPY Z. BRITE
Her smile, I'm sure, burnt Rome to the ground.
MARK Z. DANIELEWSKI
You wouldn't believe how much harder it's getting for me to just leave my studio. It's really sad. I...
MARK Z. DANIELEWSKI
Absolutely nothing visible to the eye provides a reason for or even evidence of those terrifying shi...
MARK Z. DANIELEWSKI
Beautiful women are always drawn to men they think will keep them beautiful.
MARK Z. DANIELEWSKI
Explanation is not half as strong as experience but experience is not half as strong as experience a...
MARK Z. DANIELEWSKI
People frequently comment on the emptiness in one night stands, but emptiness here has always been j...
MARK Z. DANIELEWSKI
Even the brightest magnesium flare can do little against such dark except blind the eyes of the one ...
MARK Z. DANIELEWSKI
Of course there always will be darkness but I realize now something inhabits it. Historical or not. ...
MARK Z. DANIELEWSKI