Betsy Lerner Quotes

The world doesn't fully make sense until the writer has secured his version of it on the page. And the act of writing is strangely more lifelike than life.

No matter how many compromises were made along the way, no matter what happens in the future, a book is a thing to behold.

Indeed, the great paradox of the writer's life is how much time he spends alone trying to connect with other people.

I wondered if I was just the sum of my brain scan, little dots clustered in my frontal lobe. Is that where the poems came from?.

But editors are still the world's readers. And thus the eyes of the world.

The writer labors in isolation, yet all that intensive, lonely work is in the service of communicating, is an attempt to reach another person.

... but every person who does serious time with a keyboard is attempting to translate his version of the world into words so that he might be understood.

[I]t's the child writer who has figured out, early on, that writing is about saving your soul.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change. The courage to change the things I can. And the wisdom to know the difference. I still didn't know the difference.

Nothing was a more powerful compass of my mood or a better indication of my self-worth than the number on the scale.

...but every person who does serious time with a keyboard is attempting to translate his version of the world into words so that he might be understood.

It was a miracle to me, this transformation of my acorns into an oak.