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" People don't understand how much influence they can actually have on a writer, how much a writer's feelings can be hurt, how much they can deflect his course when they raise their voices like they did over highly personal books like 'Panama' or 'Bullet Park.' "

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" Probably, subliminally, I think of the reader as a kind of collaborator. I don't want to say something for the reader that the reader could have said for himself. "

Thomas McGuane

Think

Something

Say

" I've spent as much of my life fishing as decency allowed, and sometimes I don't let even that get in my way. "

" I'm a neurotic fiction writer who'd like to be a cowboy. "

" My twenties were entirely taken up with literature. Entirely. "

Thomas McGuane

Literature

Taken

" I had a kind of tough early life. I had a tough time in school. I had an unsympathetic family in terms of what I was trying to do. I decided that my family situation was simply hopeless. I kinda bailed out, and my brother and sister didn't. I failed at marriage, which I'm very upset with myself over. "

" I strongly believe that literature can do something that nothing else can do, and that is embody the human spirit. "

" All the ranchers I know have had back surgery, operations on their rotator cuffs. They all have new knees. I'd like to think I belong to that breed, but I don't. "

" My friends seem to think that an hour and a half effort a day is all they need to bring to the altar to make things work for them. I couldn't do that. I thought that if you didn't work at least as hard as the guy who runs a gas station, then you had no right to hope for achievement. You certainly had to work all day, every day. "

" Maybe I haven't been tested, but I have no fear of death at all. I was with Allen Ginsberg during the last year of his life, and he called all his friends and said, 'I'm on my way out, and it's kind of exciting.' I see it as kind of exciting, too. "

" Literature is the ditch I'm going to die in. It's still the thing I care most about. "

" I had a spell no more striking than other people of my job description. I did all the things you weren't supposed to do. I had a motto: When in doubt, try it. I went out and committed experience. "

" Marriage is anti-romantic - husband and wife are terms like 'turkey' and 'goose.' Worse, they denote ownership. "

Thomas McGuane

Wife

Ownership

" I think anybody alert to the inspiration to write has to be kind of sensitized to the unexpected. "

" There's a view of Montana writing that seems stage-managed by the Chamber of Commerce - it's all about writers like A. B. Guthrie and Ivan Doig. It used to bother me that nobody had a scene where somebody was delivering a pizza. "

Thomas McGuane

Writing

" One of the reasons I'm reluctant to start a novel is it's such an obsessive activity. You get in there, you don't know anything else while you're in there. And that's quite a sacrifice to make, especially for us old guys where time is kind of short. You don't want to disappear for a year; you want to be outdoors. "

" It took me a long time to know enough about writing to really write short stories. You can't just immerse yourself, as you do in a novel, and see where everything goes. Novels are a very flexible, accommodating form. Short stories aren't. "

" I really do love 'Panama.' But I'd also have to admit that right now, if I were driven to write another novel like that, I wouldn't even try to find a publisher for it. It simply wouldn't be published. I'd be writing it to put in my closet upstairs. "

" I've outlived my parents, and I've had some wonderful second chances in life. I feel remarkably uncheated. "

" You never see a teaser for a film on television that doesn't have someone running around a corner with a gun. Have you noticed that?... I think Hollywood has as much responsibility for gun violence as the National Rifle Association. "

" I wrote a lot of 'Driving on the Rim' by giving myself the gift of being just as eccentric as I felt like. "

Thomas McGuane

Myself

Lot

" I'm certainly afraid of not being able to write for some reason. I guess I've had spells of not necessarily writer's block, but something like that. I find that pretty terrifying. "

Thomas McGuane

Reason

Find

" My parents and my sister died... very close together, and after that, I lost quite a bit of my sense of humor. Most of it I think has kind of come back, but I know there was a time when I didn't think things were funny anymore. I kind of think they're funny again. "

" I find it more consoling to think of myself as little than to think of myself as big. I think I've gotten that from animals, particularly dogs. Dogs live such a modest life, and they don't live long, and the more you're around them, you kind of accept that. "

" If I get too old to write, or short-term memory loss - that was the one Philip Roth was worried about - if I got to that point, that would be terrible, because everything about my life has been streaming toward writing and having something to say. That would make me feel as though I were in an iron maiden of some kind. "