"My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying."

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I suffer as always from the fear of putting down the first line. It is amazing the terrors, the magics, the prayers, the straitening shyness that assail one. It is as though the words were not only indelible but that they spread out like dye in water and color everything around them. A strange and mystic business, writing.

— John Steinbeck