A Quote by Sheila Heti

Few writers push the reader away with the coolness, dignity, and faint melancholy of Fleur Jaeggy. — © Sheila Heti
Few writers push the reader away with the coolness, dignity, and faint melancholy of Fleur Jaeggy.
I have a total responsibility to the reader. The reader has to trust me and never feel betrayed. There's a double standard between writers and readers. Readers can be unfaithful to writers anytime they like, but writers must never ever be unfaithful to the readers. And it's appropriate, because the writer is getting paid and the reader isn't.
Real writers-that is, capital W Writers-rarely make much money. Their biggest reward is the occasional reader's response.... Commentators-in-print voicing big fat opinions-you might call us small w writers-get considerably more feedback than Writers. The letters I personally find most flattering are not the very rare ones that speak well of my editorials, but the occasional reader who wants to know who writes them. I always happily assume the letter-writers is implying that the editorials are so good that I couldn't have written them myself.
That 'writers write' is meant to be self-evident. People like to say it. I find it is hardly ever true. Writers drink. Writers rant. Writers phone. Writers sleep. I have met very few writers who write at all.
Karkaroff intends to flee if the Mark burns." "Does he?" said Dumbledore softly, as Fleur Delacour and Roger Davies came giggling in from the grounds. "And are you tempted to join him?" "No," said Snape, his black eyes on Fleur's and Roger's retreating figures. "I am not such a coward." "No," agreed Dumbledore. You are a braver man by far than Igot Karkaroff. You know, I sometimes think we Sort too soon..." He walked away, leaving Snape looking stricken.
Some of the writers I admire who seem very, very funny and very emotional to me can develop a closeness with the reader without giving too much of themselves away. Lorrie Moore comes to mind, as does David Sedaris. When they write, the reader thinks that they're being trusted as a friend.
The melancholy ghosts of dead renown, Whispering faint echoes of the world's applause.
My breakthrough as a reader was when I discovered the European adventure story writers - Alexander Dumas, Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Walter Scott, to name a few.
It was the tenderness mingled with melancholy which we bring to a time that belongs irrevocably to the past, when a pale, delicate shadow rises from it bearing the lilies of the dead, and in it we find a forgotten likeness to ourselves. And that faint, wistful shadow, that pale scent, seemed to vanish away into a wide, full, warm stream - the life that now lay open before him.
You have very short travel blogs, and I think there's a split among travel writers: the service-oriented writers will say, 'Well, the reader wants to read about his trip, not yours.' Whereas I say, the reader just wants to read a good story and to maybe learn something.
The bottom line is that finding orphan planets - small, faint, and located who-knows-where - is not for the faint of heart. The task is comparable to observing a match flame at the distance of Pluto. The WISE satellite, a hi-tech, space-based infrared telescope especially suited for such work, has found only a few.
The real tragedy is that we're all human beings, and human beings have a sense of dignity. Any domination by one human over another leads to a loss of some part of his dignity. Is one's dignity that big it can be crumbled away like that?
But with writers, there's nothing wrong with melancholy. It's an important color in writing.
I suppose what happened is that I spent my whole life wanting to be cool but eventually came to recognise the mechanism of how coolness works. So it's not really that I don't want to be cool anymore - it's more like I've come to realise that coolness doesn't exist the way I once assumed.
What's beautiful about the actual acting class environment is that you can use it to push through everything: push your voice, push your inhibitions, push your fears, push your confidence, push your vulnerability, push your silences.
Writers, because they write, are condemned never to be readers of their own stories...The memory of first putting a story into words will always prevent writers from reading their work as an ordinary reader would.
The human mind is capable of excitement without the application of gross and violent stimulants; and he must have a very faint perception of its beauty and dignity who does not know this.
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