Fear of failure is the reason most often cited to explain why so many aspiring writers never realize their dreams. But I think it’s that same fear of failure that absolutely invigorates those who do push through-that is, the fear… — Betsy Lerner Copy Share Image
But editors are still the world's readers. And thus the eyes of the world. — Betsy Lerner Copy Share Image
In discovering books, you became free to explore the full range of human motives, desires, secrets, and lies. All my life, people have scolded me for having an excess of feeling, saying that I was too sensitive - as if one could be in danger from feeling too much instead of too little. But my outsize emotions were well represented… — Betsy Lerner Copy Share
Tomorrow, I am fifty-two years old. And I want to say unequivocally that I am very happy to be alive, that being alive is… — Betsy Lerner Copy Share Image
I wondered if I was just the sum of my brain scan, little dots clustered in my frontal lobe. Is that where the poems… — Betsy Lerner Copy Share Image
“I hadn't been able to trust since the age of four. I was torn between wanting to be cradled and telling the world to… — Betsy Lerner Copy Share Image
“All writers are like bomb-throwers, whether they attack with dense academic prose or jazzy riffs of stream-of-consciousness writing.” — Betsy Lerner Copy Share Image
“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change. The courage to change the things I can. And the wisdom… — Betsy Lerner Copy Share Image
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….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…. Your job is to marshal the… — Betsy Lerner Copy Share
“For most writers, reading is also a very intense experience; they don’t read so much as compete. The writer measure’s himself against every text he encounters, imagining he could do it better or wishing he had thought of it first. The natural writer would almost always rather be reading, writing, or alone, except of course when he needs to come… — Betsy Lerner Copy Share
The writer labors in isolation, yet all that intensive, lonely work is in the service of communicating, is an attempt to reach another person. — Betsy Lerner Copy Share Image
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… — Betsy Lerner Copy Share Image
Indeed, the great paradox of the writer's life is how much time he spends alone trying to connect with other people. — Betsy Lerner Copy Share Image
