Richard Kearney on Catharsis, Hauntings, Trauma:

“Writing can only work through traumas as traces revisited as hauntings. They can never fully retrieve experiences or tell the full story — fill in all the gaps….There is something always lost in translation…It was because it was too much that trauma repeats itself as lack.”

On how writers don’t psychologize their characters for the reader anymore:

“By the time we get to James Joyce, the author is on his own, floundering around in the thoughts of various unsavory characters. He finds himself in the middle of a world apparently without comment.” -Flannery O’Connor, on how authors no longer do the work for you. From “The Nature and Aim of Fiction.”