“Writing makes you a writer,” he’d told me. “If you get up every morning and write, then you’re a writer. Publishing doesn’t make you a writer. That’s just commerce.” — Joanna Rakoff Copy Share Image
“She’d never spent entire days lying on her bed reading, entire nights making up complicated stories in her head. She’d not dreamed of willing… — Joanna Rakoff Copy Share Image
“What terrified her was the set of circumstances that allowed her to eat a full pound of spaghetti, the unmoored, untethered quality of her… — Joanna Rakoff Copy Share Image
“The worst that being an artist could do to you would be that it would make you slightly unhappy constantly.” — Joanna Rakoff Copy Share Image
“She needed this wedding—this perfect, minutely orchestrated wedding—to shout, This is who I am. To tell us all that she was not that girl… — Joanna Rakoff Copy Share Image
“Salinger was not cutesy. His work was not nostalgic. These were not fairy tales about child geniuses traipsing the streets of Old New York.… — Joanna Rakoff Copy Share Image
“Why couldn’t Caitlin confide in Vix? Because she knew Vix would judge her. Because she knew Vix would refuse to understand. Because it was… — Joanna Rakoff Copy Share Image
“Alone in her anxieties and insecurities, alone in the tyranny of her mind, but also simply, literally, physically alone, her only companion an oversized,… — Joanna Rakoff Copy Share Image
“So we’re all doing a pretty good job not revealing our emotions, right? But if you can’t reveal your emotions, how do you go… — Joanna Rakoff Copy Share Image
“It gets easier once you’re no longer graded, once you have to assess your actions for yourself.” — Joanna Rakoff Copy Share Image
“Writing makes you a writer,” he’d told me. “If you get up every morning and write, then you’re a writer. Publishing doesn’t make you… — Joanna Rakoff Copy Share Image
“On Madison, the sun shone in jagged beams and the air held the promise, the hint, of warmth,” — Joanna Rakoff Copy Share Image
“Reading manuscripts was the exact opposite of reading for grad school: it was pure instinct, with some emotion and intelligence thrown in.” — Joanna Rakoff Copy Share Image
“Don’s European friends occasionally came up in conversation, but they’d yet to materialize in real life.” — Joanna Rakoff Copy Share Image
“I’d known, of course, that a blizzard was coming, or I suppose I’d known, for I didn’t own a television or a radio, and… — Joanna Rakoff Copy Share Image
