Nick Flynn Quotes

Quotes about:

• Perhaps everyone has a story that could break your heart.

  Nick Flynn

  Heart, Stories, Break

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• Alcohol is the river we sit on the banks of, contemplating. Sometimes we watch ourselves float past, sometimes we watch ourselves sink.

  Nick Flynn

  Past, Rivers, Alcohol

  Nick Flynn (2016). “Another Bullshit Night in Suck City”, p.54, Faber & Faber

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• Certain stories we carry with us, events in our life, they define who we are. It's not a matter of getting over anything; we have to make the best of it.

  Nick Flynn

  Events, Stories, Who We Are

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• Writers, especially poets, are particularly prone to madness.

  Nick Flynn

  Madness, Poet, Manic

  Nick Flynn (2016). “Another Bullshit Night in Suck City”, p.140, Faber & Faber

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• On a good day I write, all day.

  Nick Flynn

  Writing, Good Day

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• Everything we do, I'd imagine, influences everything we will do.

  Nick Flynn

  Influence, Imagine

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• Who doesn't want to just disappear, at some point in the day, in a year, to just step off the map and float?

  Nick Flynn

  Years, Maps, Want

  Nick Flynn (2016). “Another Bullshit Night in Suck City”, p.119, Faber & Faber

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• I became an electrician after high school. But I always had this thing in me to write. But it was always a little shameful. To say you were a poet was saying you were kind of crazy, and I carried that around for a long time. I still kind of carry that. And I think it might be true, actually.

  Nick Flynn

  Crazy, Writing, School

  "'Being Flynn': When Dad Needs To Take Shelter". "Fresh Air", www.npr.org. February 29, 2012.

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• In my experience, whatever happens clings to us like barnacles on the hull of a ship, slowing us slightly, both uglifying and giving us texture. You can scrape all you want, you can, if you have money, hire someone else to scrape, but the barnacles will come back or at least leave a blemish on the steel.

  Nick Flynn

  Giving, Hull, Steel

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• What you fear your whole life comes to pass. You end up living toward it, you spend your life running from it but your foot is nailed to the sidewalk. You circle around it until you wear yourself own.

  Nick Flynn

  Running, Circles, Feet

  Nick Flynn (2016). “Another Bullshit Night in Suck City”, p.168, Faber & Faber

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• We got him to talk to a psych doctor once, the doctor asked if he heard things other people don't. Sure, Paul answered, I hear birds in the morning when everyone's sleeping, I hear trees rustling when no one's around.

  Nick Flynn

  Morning, Sleep, Psych

  Nick Flynn (2016). “Another Bullshit Night in Suck City”, p.162, Faber & Faber

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• Perhaps it is our fear, that in the silence between stories, in the moment of falling, the fear that we will never find the one story which will save us, and so we lunge for another, and we feel safe again, if only for as long as we are telling it.

  Nick Flynn

  Fall, Long, Silence

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• Some part of me knew he would show up, that if I stood in one place long enough he would find me, like you're taught to do when you're lost. But they never taught us what to do if both of you are lost, and you both end up in the same place, waiting.

  Nick Flynn

  Taught Us, Long, Waiting

  Nick Flynn (2016). “Another Bullshit Night in Suck City”, p.22, Faber & Faber

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• I get inspired by my friends, and if a friend is a writer, that is even deeper.

  Nick Flynn

  Inspired, Deeper, My Friends

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• Sometimes I'd see my father, walking past my building on his way to another nowhere. I could have given him a key, offered a piece of my floor. A futon. A bed. But I never did. If I let him inside I would become him, the line between us would blur, my own slow-motion car wreck would speed up. The slogan on the side of a moving company truck read TOGETHER WE ARE GOING PLACES--modified by a vandal or a disgruntled employee to read TOGETHER WE ARE GOING DOWN. If I went to the drowning man the drowning man would pull me under. I couldn't be his life raft.

  Nick Flynn

  Father, Moving, Men

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• If you're going to write about someone's life, you don't just use them for wallpaper. You have to honor and respect that life.

  Nick Flynn

  Writing, Honor And Respect, Use

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• By the time I'm nine I know the world is a dangerous place. I've heard whispers about razorblades in apples, about Charlie Manson and his family. But no one is offering any clear information.

  Nick Flynn

  Offering, Apples, World

  Nick Flynn (2016). “Another Bullshit Night in Suck City”, p.51, Faber & Faber

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• Read as much as you can. Write only when you feel the inner need to do so. And don’t ever rush into print.

  Nick Flynn

  Writing, Needs, Print

  Nick Flynn (2016). “Another Bullshit Night in Suck City”, p.191, Faber & Faber

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• The attention one gets from being a poet isnt great.

  Nick Flynn

  Attention, Poet

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• By the time I make my way to the border of Mauritania, to the edge of the Sahara, I see no end to being lost. You can spend your entire life simply falling in that direction. It isn't a station you reach but just the general state of going down. Once you make it back, if you make it back, you will stand before your long-lost friends but in some essential way they will no longer know you.

  Nick Flynn

  Fall, Long, Essentials

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• inside us, a flower taken whole, a field built inside.

  Nick Flynn

  Flower, Taken, Fields

  Nick Flynn (2015). “Blind Huber: Poems”, p.23, Macmillan

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• I can weep pretty easily. I can get tears in my eyes from a beautiful work of art.

  Nick Flynn

  Beautiful, Art, Eye

  "Nick Flynn on Fatherhood, Suicide, Torture, Love, and Being Lost". Interview with Tom Matlack, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 09, 2010.

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• Writers, especially poets, are particularly prone to madness. There exists a striking association between creativity and manic depression. Why are more creative people prone to madness? They have more than average amounts of energies and abilities to see things in a fresh and original way—then because they also have depression, I think they’re more in touch with human suffering.

  Nick Flynn

  Creativity, Thinking, Average

  Nick Flynn (2016). “Another Bullshit Night in Suck City”, p.140, Faber & Faber

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• When I was a child, writing was the worst possible choice of a career in my family.

  Nick Flynn

  Children, Writing, Careers

  "'Being Flynn': When Dad Needs To Take Shelter". "Fresh Air" with Dave Davies, kazu.org. February 29, 2012.

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• Water can be a symbol of purification, to stand naked before someone a sign of truth, of nothing to hide. - Nick Flynn

  Nick Flynn

  Water, Naked, Purification

  Nick Flynn (2016). “Another Bullshit Night in Suck City”, p.129, Faber & Faber

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