"I have talked about these authors who are dear to me. Why do I feel a certain joyful love for them? Because they all inspire me with a feeling that resembles Genet's love for his "Le Funambule": they inspire me with fear and admiration. I feel fear and confidence.... Because what they reveal is audaciousness, which consists in saying the worst, in writing the worst, making apparent, naming the worst. I am not talking about religious people; these are poets. It's not about confessing oneself. This fascinates me, because confession puts into play something which seems to me impossible and terrible: erasure. Are we supposed to be amnestied? Confession treats ritually what is absolutely untreatable."It so happens that these authors emerged wounded and enraged from a scene of confession. Because there is no God in their texts, even when there may be some in their hearts. That's another thing. There is no religion. There is the human."
--Hélène Cixous, "The School of the Dead," from Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing
I carry this one with me when I'm working: "When I write, I become like a thing, a wild beast. A wild beast doesn't look back when it leaps, doesn't check that people are watching and admiring. Those who do not become wild beasts when they write, who write to please, write nothing that has not already been written, and forge extra bars for our cage." H.C. from "We Who Are Free, Are We Free?"
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