“All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse, and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was.”
—Ernest Hemingway
Definitely Real Quotes from Authors
“I find the most erotic part of a woman is the boobies.” –Henry Miller in a letter to Anaïs Nin, 1942
“I don’t have low self-esteem. I have low esteem for everyone else.” –Sylvia Plath, marginalia ca. 1960
“Hi there. You might remember me from such commencement speeches as ‘Get Confident, Stupid.’” –David Foster Wallace at Kenyon College, 2005
“Good weed is hard to find.” –Flannery O’Connor in a letter sent from the University of Iowa to Savannah, Georgia, 1946
“I’m sorry I laughed at you that time you got diarrhea at Barnes & Noble.” –Michael Cunningham in a text message to Jonathan Safran Foer, 2007
“How did I fail Women’s Studies? I love bitches.” –Philip Roth, Bucknell University exit interview, 1954
“Do you have the time to listen to me whine about nothing and everything all at once?” –Virginia Woolf, grocery list ca. 1939
“Maybe it’s the liquor talking, but you’ve got a butt that won’t quit. They got these big chewy pretzels here … [indecipherable] … Five dollars? Get outta here!” –John Cheever in a postcard marked ‘return to sender,’ 1976
“WHY WON’T YOU LET ME BE GREAT!!!” –Oscar Wilde at Reading Prison, 1897
“You claim to be a player but I fucked your wife.” –Ernest Hemingway in letters to Scott Fitzgerald, 1924, 1930, June 1931, July 1931, 1934, and etched into gravestone, 1947
