Jane Alison Quotes

Teaching writing puts you on the point of a pin in terms of what you want your own writing to be.

Sometimes there isn't a way to hug and make everything better.

Like a lot of writers, I just got sick to death of conventional fiction. I absolutely couldn't stand the illusion of reality and plot. I just couldn't stomach it.

When you get immersed in whatever you're writing, the world does suddenly get so filtered through what you're writing. And then of course what you're writing then filters the world right back.

When you're waiting for a bus, the thing to do is smoke a cigarette.

My first memory is on a ship from California back to Sydney. Water is just a natural place of home and not home.

I suppose you retire from trying. If you retire from trying, you think, "Maybe love will just come my way if I don't want it anymore."

I know perfectly well that you can't not want anything and live.

You have to want something or you're finished.

I wouldn't underestimate the power of writing a letter.

I know that I was able to find my way out of most of my feelings by writing.

I think sometimes to still be angry is appropriate, but you want to be able to live with it.

I've always wanted to figure out how to do a walking story. I'd never figured out how to do one and have it work or be interesting or have anything that it's about.

That's what perfect means. You're finished.

I don't think you can have an imagination without having fantasy, and you can't have that rich a life without an imagination.

In order to have a real life of any romance, there has to be a level of fantasy.

You can sometimes find something good on the other side of doing something very, very painful.

There's a lot of water in everything I've ever written. There's always oceans and pools.

I grew up flying over oceans and moving and sailing.

I do some messing around with things, not necessarily about me but about place and people and the things around.

Early in the phase of being in a female body, there's all this desire that comes at you, a lot of it hostile, a lot of it dangerous, a lot of it ruinous.

I sometimes think that we expect too much resolution in this world.

This stream of watching made what was watched wanted.