Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" We're always attracted to the edges of what we are, out by the edges where it's a little raw and nervy. "

Related Quotes:

" Obama is a great man who's just beginning to understand the realities. And I'm not just saying that because he reads my books. I would have voted for him anyway. "

" The writer isn't made in a vacuum. Writers are witnesses. The reason we need writers is because we need witnesses to this terrifying century. "

" I got married very early, and in no time at all, we had three children. And it seemed to me I had an obligation to support them. "

" The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like. "

" I get intrigued by a first lin and I write to find out why it means something to me. You make discoveries just the way the reader does, so you're simultaneously the writer and the reader. "

" Somewhere along the line the rhythms and tonalities of music elided in my brain with the sounds that words make and the rhythm that sentences have. "

" Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia. "

" I've outlasted many marriages at Random House. "

" I have a number of vices, one of which is moderation. "

" Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you're doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing. "

" I like commas. I detest semi-colons - I don't think they belong in a story. And I gave up quotation marks long ago. I found I didn't need them, they were fly-specks on the page. "

" In fiction, you know, there are no borders. You can go anywhere. "

" I started on computers with 'Billy Bathgate,' a little orange screen with black letters. I thought it was really cool, but it actually slowed me up for a while because it's so easy to revise, I tended to stay on the same page. I've learned to discipline myself. "

" My sense of what a book should be has changed so radically. I like to think for the better. "

" Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go. "

" Things that appear on the front page of the newspaper as 'fact' are far more dangerous than the games played by a novelist, and can lead to wars. "

" A new reader shouldn't be able to find you in your work, though someone who's read more may begin to. "

" There are two books that impressed me when I was very young. One was 'The Adventures of Augie March' - the idea of having something so generous, and so adventurous and improvisatory. The other was 'The U.S.A. Trilogy,' by John Dos Passos. "

" When you're working well, you don't do research. Whatever you need comes to you. "

" It's like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way. "

" Congress is so beholden to the money that any solution in the general interest will be frustrated and subverted by the corporate interests who feel they will be damaged by progress, fair play and justice. "

" Suffering isn't a moral endowment. People don't always do well under duress, and it seemed to me to be truer to a fellow in that situation to make him angry. "

" Each book tends to have its own identity rather than the author's. It speaks from itself rather than you. Each book is unlike the others because you are not bringing the same voice to every book. I think that keeps you alive as a writer. "

" There is no longer any such thing as fiction or nonfiction; there's only narrative. "

" Writers are not just people who sit down and write. They hazard themselves. Every time you compose a book your composition of yourself is at stake. "

" One of the things I had to learn as a writer was to trust the act of writing. To put myself in the position of writing to find out what I was writing. "

" Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader - not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon. "

" The nature of good fiction is that it dwells in ambiguity. "

" Washington is designed not to solve problems. Congress is so beholden to the money that any solution in the general interest will be frustrated and subverted by the corporate interests who feel they will be damaged by progress, fair play and justice. "

" Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way. "