An essay is a work of literary art which has a minimum of one anecdote and one universal idea.

- Carol Bly

Unlike lions and dogs, we are a dissenting animal. We need to dissent in the same way that we need to travel, to make money, to keep a record of our …

- Carol Bly

It is very difficult to teach navigation theory to someone who clings to the shore.

- Carol Bly

I don't engage in self-censorship. But I do change everybody to have red hair in the last draft. ... If you give people red hair when in real life th…

- Carol Bly

The secret of literature, which conventional people don't guess, is that writers are forever looking for the surprising revelation - not for reinforc…

- Carol Bly

The principle of literature is devotion to the particulars of life.

- Carol Bly

There isn't a thought or feeling that doesn't alter or deepen when written. We are a writing animal. That is why all of us feel we have a book inside…

- Carol Bly

your soul needs to be lonely so that its strangest elements can moil about, curl and growl and jump, fail and get triumphant, all inside you. Sociabl…

- Carol Bly

No one is shallow and vulgar forever; sooner or later the whole species likes to be profound.

- Carol Bly