A Quote by Maggie O'Farrell

As you'll know yourself, there are these moments when you're writing a book when one remark or moment will pull everything together and you'll think, "That's it. I've got what I need."
Sometimes, for a moment, everything is just as you need it to be. The memories of such moments live in the heart, waiting for the time you need to think of them, if only to remind yourself that for a short while, everything had been fine, and might be so again.
My father probably taught me everything I know, aside from dialogue, which I think I get from my mom a lot more. He certainly didn't teach me everything he knew, but you know he has got this book out called "The Spooky Art," which is essentially an advanced book on writing and it's not... You know it's not ABC, but it's for people who feel that bug and know that they're writers and are willing to put in that time alone. Pretty much the vast majority of what he taught me you can find in that book.
I would tell high school Shane to just start writing down everything that was happening. It was so hard to think back to all those terrible moments. They all started clustering together into one big terrible moment.
People often remark that I'm pretty lucky. Luck is only important in so far as getting the chance to sell yourself at the right moment. After that, you've got to have talent and know how to use it.
The Ultimate Reality is that everything you think you need, you already have. It exists inside of you. Indeed, it is you. You are what you need - and therefore, you give yourself everything you need in any given moment.
The first person you should think of pleasing, in writing a book, is yourself. If you can amuse yourself for the length of time it takes to write a book, the publisher and the readers can and will come later.
There is no better moment than this moment, when we're anticipating the actual moment itself. All of the moments that lead up to the actual moment are truly the best moments. Those are the moments that are filled with good times. Those are the moments in which you are able to think that it is going to be perfect, when the moment actually happens. But, the moment is reality, and reality always kinda sucks!
Writing a novel, in an unplanned and unpredictable way, makes you engaged; it takes you into yourself, and it becomes something between you and the character for a moment, and then you move back into the structure of the book. I love those moments, because they are completely unbidden.
When you're writing a book, it's rather like going on a very long walk, across valleys and mountains and things [...] The highest mountain on the walk is obviously the end of the book, because it's got to be the best view of all, when everything comes together and you can look back and see that everything you've done all ties up. But it's a very, very long, slow process.
You know everything and you know nothing… And in that there’s this: You will always learn something new. About him. About her. About yourself. And in learning the bad, the uncomfortable, the messy- it’s what you take away that counts. What will you do with that knowledge? Will you leave? Pull tighter? Ignore it? Use it to fall in love even deeper? That’s when you learn more about yourself.
You know those moments when everything is exactly the way it was meant to be? When you find yourself and your entire universe aligning in perfect synchronization, and you know you couldn’t possibly be more content? I was inside that very moment, and fully conscious of it.
What we are talking about is learning to live in the present moment, in the now. When you aren't distracted by your own negative thinking, when you don't allow yourself to get lost in moments that are gone or yet to come, you are left with this moment. This moment-now-truly is the only moment you have. It is beautiful and special. Life is simply a series of such moments to be experienced one right after another. If you attend to the moment you are in and stay connected to your soul and remain happy, you will find that your heart is filled with positive feelings.
I once wrote a lecture for Manchester University called « Moments of Discovery » in which I said that there are two moments that are important. There's the moment when you know you can find out the answer and that's the period you are sleepless before you know what it is. When you've got it and know what it is, then you can rest easy.
Pull your boots up by the bootstrap and know that everything is temporary. All good moments are temporary and all bad moments are temporary. Nothing lasts forever.
Art must take reality by surprise. It takes those moments which are for us merely a moment, plus a moment, plus another moment, and arbitrarily transforms them into a special series of moments held together by a major emotion.
I have been writing. Even when I intend not to write, I find myself writing. I'm currently in a place where I should be putting together the fifth book, but then more poems are coming. It's exciting and somewhat daunting. You know how we are when a new book of poems is at last coming together - all frenzy, distraction, and bounty? It's as if I've turned into summer itself.
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