Jayne Anne Phillips Quotes

• Literature can teach us how to live before we live, and how to die before we die. I believe that writing is practice for death, and for every (other) transformation human beings encounter.

  Jayne Anne Phillips

  Believe, Writing, Practice

  FaceBook post by Jayne Anne Phillips from Dec 04, 2011

  47 Copy quote

• Towns change; they grow or diminish, but hometowns remain as we left them.

  Jayne Anne Phillips

  Towns, Hometown, Grows

  FaceBook post by Jayne Anne Phillips from Jul 07, 2012

  184 Copy quote

• If all stories are fiction, fiction can be true -- not in detail or fact, but in some transformed version of feeling. If there is a memory of paradise, paradise can exist, in some other place or country dimensionally reminiscent of our own. The sad stories live there too, but in that country, we know what they mean and why they happened. We make our way back from them, finding the way through a bountiful wilderness we begin to understand. Years are nothing: Story conquers all distance.

  Jayne Anne Phillips

  Country, Memories, Distance

  FaceBook post by Jayne Anne Phillips from Feb 25, 2012

  6 Copy quote

• Talk between women friends is always therapy.

  Jayne Anne Phillips

  Therapy

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• If death is this brilliant slide, this high, fine music felt as pure vibration, this plunging float in wind and silence, it's not so bad.

  Jayne Anne Phillips

  Wind, Silence, Vibrations

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• I write line by line, by the sound and the weight and the music of the words.

  Jayne Anne Phillips

  Writing, Sound, Weight

  "Building Bridges". Interview with Nicci Gerrard, www.theguardian.com. September 23, 2000.

  4 Copy quote

• The writer's first affinity is not to a loyalty, a tradition, a morality, a religion, but to life itself, and to its representation in language.

  Jayne Anne Phillips

  Loyalty, Firsts, Morality

  FaceBook post by Jayne Anne Phillips from Oct 12, 2012

  4 Copy quote

• Then he's inside you, and your body remembers, each time, every man, even if you try to forget.

  Jayne Anne Phillips

  Men, Trying, Body

  Jayne Anne Phillips (2012). “Lark and Termite”, p.90, Random House

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• When the year turns, there are bells on the wind. All the old years fall on the ground in lights.

  Jayne Anne Phillips

  Fall, Light, Years

  Jayne Anne Phillips (2014). “Quiet Dell: A Novel”, p.3, Simon and Schuster

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• The writing life is a secret life, wither we admit it or not.

  Jayne Anne Phillips

  Writing, Secret, Life Is

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• Love is the outlaw's duty.

  Jayne Anne Phillips

  Love Is, Outlaw, Duty

  Jayne Anne Phillips (2011). “Black Tickets: Stories”, p.262, Vintage

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• I wish I had more time to write.

  Jayne Anne Phillips

  Writing, Wish, More Time

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• As before, there is a great silence, with no end in sight. The writer surrenders, listening.

  Jayne Anne Phillips

  Sight, Silence, Listening

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• Smoke veils the air like souls in drifting suspension, declining the war's insistence everyone move on.

  Jayne Anne Phillips

  War, Moving, Air

  FaceBook post by Jayne Anne Phillips from Jun 20, 2011

  4 Copy quote

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