Navigating a nonsober world of restaurants and bars, dinner parties, and benefits is like anything that requires practice. Like tennis or a foreign language, it gets easier the more you do it. But like all beginnings, it can be awkward. You stumble, you worry, and then there are unexpected moments of grace that give you the courage to keep going. Bill Clegg Read Quote
I’m rereading Jenny Offill’s ‘Dept. of Speculation.’ I love it, and she’s just a magician. Line by line and paragraph by paragraph, it’s mesmerizing and so intricately plotted and so nimble. Bill Clegg Read Quote
Recovery is an ongoing project that is really discrete from everything else in my life. It allows me to be an agent, allows me to write, allows me to be married, allows me to be part of a family. The writing is not a support beam of recovery but a happy consequence of it. Bill Clegg Read Quote
There are times when I’ll send a manuscript to an editor, and I’ll think it is the most likely project I’ve ever sent them. And they might call me the next morning and say they couldn’t tolerate it. That happens so frequently that I’ve given up any expectation of knowing what anybody’s going to like. Bill Clegg Read Quote
I have no idea how people think of literary agents. Truthfully, I don’t think they think of them very often. Bill Clegg Read Quote
Public speaking, for me, or speaking even in front of a handful of people is my greatest fear. Bill Clegg Read Quote
My experience is that books take on a life of their own and create their own energy. I’ve represented books that have been sold for very little money and gone on to great glory, and I’ve seen books sold for an enormous amount of money published to very little response. Bill Clegg Read Quote
When I write, I tend to read it out loud to myself after. I’m a very uncomfortable reader, so it creates a distance between the text and me – it is a new way to see it. Bill Clegg Read Quote
I think of the part of me that writes as the most private self. It’s the part that’s engaged the least with the rest of the world’s needs. Bill Clegg Read Quote
We only learn at the speed of pain, and we don’t have others in our lives without forgiveness. Bill Clegg Read Quote
