"I think that you have to be willing to be in a state of embarrassment and cringe in order to write a lot. There is no other way. Self enjoyment is embarrassing.

The reason why I like to read is not because I’m looking for elegant writing or because I want to be impressed by craft really. I am not looking to be represented either. People who read don’t really want someone to tell our stories for us and, yet, we are obsessed with reading stories. The reason why we like to read is the same reason we like to snoop. We are able to intuit that sharing self enjoyment is incredibly embarrassing and this intuition enlivens our curiosity.

I think that embarrassment is incredibly important—we cannot really read if we only allow ourselves to read books that we think will make us into better people. We read because we like to snoop. The same goes for writing. We can only write if we allow ourselves to be villains, to have big egos, to be self indulgent, and to be careless. We will never write if we are trying to be good writers." —Alice Sparkly Kat