Quote of the Day (A.L. Kennedy, on the True Nature of Writers’ Insights)

“People assume that writers are terribly insightful and good at being with or reading other people. But the people we portray are, of course, people we made up and therefore very accessible to us. We hopefully make mankind our study and gain benefits from that. We are also human beings who spend huge amounts of time alone, obsessed by the fruits of our own control-freakery. So our research into humanity may make us smart about certain things, but if you get us on a bad day we may not notice if you’re on fire. (When I say ‘we’ I mean ‘me.’)” — Scottish writer and stand-up comedian A.L. Kennedy quoted in Claire Cameron, “Claire Cameron Interviews A.L. Kennedy: ‘Marry Someone Who Makes You Laugh,’” Los Angeles Review of Books, August 11, 2014