Jessica Francis Kane

"I write what I am interested in, and hope it will find an audience. I don’t know that it would make a lot of sense to do it the other way around."

"Consider the as houseguest. Is it a good idea to invite someone into your home whose occupation it is to observe everything?"

"Scholes mentioned and quoted from the “Following the Plot” essay, so the first thing I did was get my hands on a copy of The Afterlife: Essays and Criticism by Penelope Fitzgerald so I could read the essay in full. I guess mostly simply, I took Fitzgerald at her word. In that essay she says letters had arrived that dangled the possibility of an inheritance, and she decided to make the trip to Mexico to see about it. She and were quite desperate at that point, living beyond their means in London, editing a failing literary journal, with two young children and a third on the way. ... Penelope and Desmond stayed together until his death in 1976. Her first novel was written to entertain him as he declined. Despite all the problems, I think they must have loved each other deeply."

"Follow your obsessions. It feels lonely and crazy sometimes, but if you believe in them other people will too, and you will create something enduring."