Home > Work > Harriet Wolf's Seventh Book of Wonders
1 " I didn’t know it until the end. All stories worth telling are love stories. "
― Julianna Baggott , Harriet Wolf's Seventh Book of Wonders
2 " I’ve either been in love a dozen times or never. I can’t tell. "
3 " The truth that writers secretly harbor is that all books are failures. We try to do something that can’t be done. Words. Is that all we rely on? Smudgy ink marks on a page? Pallid wisps and blotches? Text as scaffolding trying to hold up worlds? Actually, no, it’s not all we rely on. What’s worse is our reliance on the reader. A writer is forever locked in an interdependent relationship. It’s like building a bridge from opposite sides of a river—our flimsy words and their frail, overreaching imaginations. The bridge will never meet in the middle. It’s not possible. Sometimes you haven’t even decided on the same river. The Gateway Arch in Saint Louis missed in the middle by a matter of inches the first time around. They tried again and made it. Writers know we never will. "
4 " Perhaps we're all doomed to fail as mothers, but if so, it's better to err on the side of showing too much love, not too little". "
5 " Once upon a time, privacy was valued. For goodness’ sake, a disabled president of the United States could ask that the press not photograph him in a wheelchair or being transferred to his car or generally in a weakened state, and the press would oblige. Those were the days. "
6 " New losses dig up past losses, as if one needs the other to remember how it’s done. "