Failure Quote by Vladimir Nabokov

“Unfortunately his urge to write had suddenly petered out and he did not know what to do with himself. He was not sleepy having…

— Vladimir Nabokov

“He didn't understand what happened to him. He felt like a piece of paper that had once had coherent writing on it but had…

— Jonathan Franzen

“Even as he printed the words, he imagined people reading them, people moved by his loneliness and disappointment, even by his wretched spelling, the…

— Don DeLillo

“During those days, both the bed and my little rickety table were swimming in notes and scribbled-over manuscripts that I took turns working on,…

— Knut Hamsun

“He was back at the point of departure, at the place that filled writers with dread and excitement, for this was where they must…

— Felix J. Palma

“He forgets the books he has read, has no memory for dates and misplaces the momentous events in his life. Like a river, all…

— Stefan Zweig

“The life these words speak of is not worth the ink they are written in… He now knows that the only words worth writing…

— Andreï Makine

“For this, that now was coming, he had very little curiosity. For years it had obseessed him; but now it meant nothing in itself.…

— Ernest Hemingway

“...they'll say, 'He never recovered from that breakdown and this was the result. It had to be the breakdown--not even he was that dreadful…

— Philip Roth

“He had no intention of writing. He loved reading, that was all. And he read books that he thought so far beyond anything that…

— Niall Williams

“If you think a story can be like a kind of cement, the sloppy kind that you put between bricks, the kind that looks…

— Carol Rifka Brunt

“On the third play he dropped back to pass, and it was unadulterated chaos: The pocket was immediately collapsing, people were yelling, everything was…

— Chuck Klosterman