The writer's first affinity is not to a loyalty, a tradition, a morality, a religion, but to life itself, and to its representation in language. — Jayne Anne Phillips Copy Share Image
Character and story are suggested by the voice in the words themselves. — Jayne Anne Phillips Copy Share Image
Then he's inside you, and your body remembers, each time, every man, even if you try to forget. — Jayne Anne Phillips Copy Share Image
I write line by line, by the sound and the weight and the music of the words. — Jayne Anne Phillips Copy Share Image
I don't do much rewriting, because each paragraph is very carefully put together. — Jayne Anne Phillips Copy Share Image
Literature can teach us how to live before we live, and how to die before we die. I believe that writing is practice for… — Jayne Anne Phillips Copy Share Image
Smoke veils the air like souls in drifting suspension, declining the war's insistence everyone move on. — Jayne Anne Phillips Copy Share Image
If all stories are fiction, fiction can be true -- not in detail or fact, but in some transformed version of feeling. If there… — Jayne Anne Phillips Copy Share Image
“The ragged cat drags its belly across where the grass is short and the stones are sharp, under the lilacs that have no flowers.… — Jayne Anne Phillips Copy Share Image
That whole business of having two homes, and that divided loyalty bind that kids get into. I mean, my parents were divorced - though… — Jayne Anne Phillips Copy Share Image
I work via the high-tension-wire method, which is maybe going for long periods without writing while the tension builds up - when am I… — Jayne Anne Phillips Copy Share Image
I don't investigate things by writing about them, but let them build up inside of me. — Jayne Anne Phillips Copy Share Image
