Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" I don't necessarily want to make people stomp and clap. I simply want to engage people. "

Related Quotes:

" The question about my Canadianness comes up a lot, and I'm never quite sure what to say about it. I've carved a life out for myself in Oregon, and it feels like home, not because it's the States but because that's where my friends are and where my son is. "

" I was halfway through a rough draft of 'The Sisters Brothers' when it came time to start the 'Terri' adaptation. "

" When you're 8 years old, and you've become subconsciously familiar with the layout and design of Black Sparrow books, and you know the difference between Miles Davis and John Coltrane, something is bound to stick. "

" I've stopped reading about the death of books because it's wasteful and morbid and insulting to the authors, agents, publishers, booksellers, critics, and readers that keep the world community of fiction interesting. "

" All of my close friends are emotional train wrecks. This is what makes our lives interesting - constantly doubting ourselves, worrying, wondering if we've made a mistake. Could we have done better? Are we good people? Are we bad people? "

" I haven't read a lot of Westerns. But I wrote a Western. The influences were all cinematic. "

" I kept trying to write these books that were sort of outside of my realm, and I kept failing. "

" I am a bit prudish, I think. It's hard for me to write about sex, and I don't really care to read about it, either. "

" I am a homebody, something that lends itself to my profession. "

" The nice thing about writing at home is that it's almost as though I'm doing it already. I get out of bed thinking of my work, and I don't have to go anywhere to do it. "

" By the time I left the bar, I was 30. I was a dishwasher. They call it a bar-back, but essentially, I washed dishes for a living. I had no high-school diploma, I had no agent, and my literary successes were non-existent... but it was the only thing I ever wanted to do, so I did feel trapped. "

" I don't know that happy people are interesting to write about - or to read about. "

" A lot of my favourite books - I should say, not much happens in the books! It's much more about the points of view of the author more than anything else. "

" My first book didn't even have a Canadian publisher. And that upset me, because I so wanted a readership up there. "

" The hardest thing in the world for a writer is to amass a readership. So many good books come out, and so many good books disappear. "

" My interest in words and literature is always changing. And every day of work is different, and it doesn't feel laborious in the way that, say, washing dishes did. I'm quite happy to be doing what I'm doing, and I feel very lucky. "

" One of the nice things about writing is you can take essentially painful things in your life and turn them into something that might be useful, or at least entertaining, to somebody else. "

" Often the starting point for characters, for me, is finding a little, most minor detail, and I'll go from there. "

" I've got a publicist at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt who's been working little miracles for me, but it's true the budgets aren't what they once were in terms of advertisement and book tours. "

" I was reading my son some fables; it made for good nighttime reading. These stories were very vivid and very strange and occasionally bizarrely violent. It was a very free landscape. "

" Every industry has slack times, and everyone has bad days at work. "

" I come by writing dialogue fairly naturally, I've got a chatty family; I'm a bit of a voyeur, and if I'm ever in a public place, I automatically find myself listening. "

" I had no plan to write a western novel, and when I realized it was happening, I was pretty surprised by it. But you have to go with what feels right. "

" I wrote for so many years in a bubble, the way everyone does, and there were large swaths of time where you think you're doing this for nothing. An audience is crucial, a back and forth with the invisible readers. "

" After school, I got a job in a shop in Hollywood and shared an apartment with a friend. I promptly lost my job and got evicted from my apartment, and that happened several times. "

" Unfunny people should be locked up, the key tossed into a smelter. "

" Bernie Madoff is probably more nuanced then I'm giving him credit for, but I just couldn't get under his skin. "

" Lies can be wonderful things, and when a lie is told artfully, if it's done with a degree of craftsmanship, I can't help but admire the liar. "

" I understand the desire to write and read about the death of publishing. It's a perversely and universally appealing topic. "

" When your protagonist bores you, you're in trouble. "