“Shakespeare had found language for the agony of living with one's own ...” — Virginia Euwer Wolff Quote

“Shakespeare had found language for the agony of living with one's own mistakes. There were words for finding yourself isolated with your failures. Phrases for discovering that you were wrong, all, all wrong, wrong, wrong.”

“Reviewers have called my books 'novels in verse.' I think of them as written in prose, but I do use stanzas. Stanza means 'room' in Latin, and I wanted there to be 'room' - breathing opportunities to receive thoughts and have time to come out of them before starting again at the left margin.”

“Nine years old, I became the victim of war. I didn't like that picture at all. I felt like, why he took my picture, when I was agony, naked, so ugly? I wished that picture wasn't taken.”

“In the traditional urban novel, there is only survival or not. The suburban idea, the conformist idea, that agony can be seen to and cured by doctors or psychoanalysis or self-knowledge is nowhere to be found in the city. Talking is a way of life, but it is not a cure. Same with religion.”

“Real joy seems to me almost as unlike security or prosperity as it is unlike agony.”