Dylan O'Sullivan Quotes

Irish writer and editor

Dylan O'Sullivan is an Irish writer and editor based in Cork, Ireland. He holds a BA in English Studies from Trinity College Dublin and an MA in New Media from the University of Amsterdam, where he spent two years working as a writing specialist before going solo. He is Senior Editor at Infinite Books and writes the Substack newsletter Essayful, which has tens of thousands of subscribers and condenses a decade of three-books-per-week reading into long-form essays on writing, books, and culture. His byline has appeared in The Spectator, Areo Magazine, and other publications. He also offers one-on-one writing instruction over Zoom for novelists, academics, and other writers.

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Read more so you can talk better

At least once a day, find a quiet corner where you can turn off the world and listen to yourself, you'll slowly lose yourself if you don't, and you won't even notice it happening

Many spend years in pain just to avoid a few days of embarrassment, don't do that

Life's too short to be nonchalant, become as chalant as you possibly can

You don’t need to read more books, fewer books might even be better, because what you really need to do is read more slowly, deeply, and far, far more selectively

It's not about winning, it's about sleeping soundly in the knowledge that you gave everything you had

Your brain will invent fake problems for you if you don't go out and find real ones

It's very difficult to think yourself out of melancholy you thought yourself into, it's far easier to work your way out, write your way out, walk your way out

The end goal of all things is to be remembered fondly, life, work, art, anything, if future generations smile at what you left behind, that is the sign that your time on earth was spent well

You really have no idea what you actually think until you attempt to write it down

It’s totally natural to lose faith in humanity, it’s your job to make that loss as momentary as possible