Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
She was good at talking with young people. She seemed to view them as interesting foreigners.
Some people are aware of everything that is going on everywhere at every moment in their lives.
Odd how clear it suddenly became, once a person had died, that the body was the very least of him.
Once your mind is caught on the right snag, there's nothing so hard about the mechanics of writing.
There is no sound more peaceful than rain on the roof, if you're safe asleep in someone else's house.
My writing day has grown shorter as I've aged, although it seems to produce the same number of pages.
I write because I want more than one life; I insist on a wider selection. It's greed, plain and simple.
I consciously try to end my novels at a point where I won't have to wonder about my characters ever again.
View your burden as a gift. It's the theme that has been given you to work with. Accept that and lean into it.
And I am interested in the fact that class is very much a factor in America, even though it's not supposed to be.
I love to think about chance - about how one little overheard word, one pebble in a shoe, can change the universe.
Bravest thing about people is how they go on loving mortal beings after finding out there's such a thing as dying.
I never think about the actual process of writing. I suppose I have a superstition about examining it too closely.
I don't type [when I write] because . . . I often have the feeling that everything flows directly from my right hand.
The one ironclad rule is that I have to try. I have to walk into my writing room and pick up my pen every weekday morning
For my own family, I would always choose the makeshift, surrogate family formed by various characters unrelated by blood.
The one ironclad rule is that I have to try. I have to walk into my writing room and pick up my pen every weekday morning.
...he thought of dying as a kind of adventure, something new that he hadn't yet experienced. Like an unusual vacation trip.
They were like people who run to meet, holding out their arms, but their aim is wrong; they pass each other and keep running.
Not until the final draft do I force myself to remember that I'm going to have to think about how it will affect other people.
He was wondering if there was some cryptic, cultish mark on his door that told all the crazy people he'd have trouble saying no.
I'm beginning to think that maybe it's not just how much you love someone. Maybe what matters is who you are when you're with them.
But I don't think people take bad advice. They've got intuition too, you know. In fact I'd be surprised if they take any advice at all.
There is no true life. Your true life is the one you end up with, whatever it may be. You just do the best you can with what you've got.
I wonder how many times we dream that kind of dream-something strange and illogical-and fail to realize God is trying to tell us something.
It seems to me that good novels celebrate the mystery in ordinary life, and summing it all up in psychological terms strips the mystery away
It seems to me that good novels celebrate the mystery in ordinary life, and summing it all up in psychological terms strips the mystery away.
I'm too shy for personal appearances, and I've found out that anytime I talk about my writing, I can't do any writing for many weeks afterward.
People always talked about a mother's uncanny ability to read her children, but that was nothing compared to how children could read their mothers.
No couple buying wedding rings wants to be reminded that someday one of them will have to accept the other one's ring from a nurse or an undertaker.
I don't know what takes more courage: surviving a lifelong endurance test because you once made a promise or breaking free, disrupting all your world.
I expect that any day now, I will have said all I have to say; I'll have used up all my characters, and then I'll be free to get on with my real life.
I was standing in the schoolyard waiting for a child when another mother came up to me. Have you found work yet? she asked. Or are you still just writing?
None of my own experiences ever finds its way into my work. However, the stages of my life - motherhood, middle age, etc. - often influence my subject matter.
I just want to be told a story, and I want to believe I'm living that story, and I don't give a thought to influences or method or any other writerly concerns
I just want to be told a story, and I want to believe I'm living that story, and I don't give a thought to influences or method or any other writerly concerns.
The Amateur Marriage grew out of the reflection that of all the opportunities to show differences in character, surely an unhappy marriage must be the richest.
I think it must be very hard to be one of the new young writers who are urged to put themselves forward when it may be the last thing on earth they'd be good at
I think it must be very hard to be one of the new young writers who are urged to put themselves forward when it may be the last thing on earth they'd be good at.
I think I was born with the impression that what happened in books was much more reasonable, and interesting, and real, in some ways, than what happened in life.
One sad thing about this world is that the acts that take the most out of you are usually the ones that people will never know about. (from 'Celestial Navigation')
It's true that it's a solitary occupation, but you would be surprised at how much companionship a group of imaginary characters can offer once you get to know them.
Mostly it's lies, writing novels. You set out to tell an untrue story and you try to make it believable, even to yourself. Which calls for details; any good lie does.
But what I hope for from a book - either one that I write or one that I read - is transparency. I want the story to shine through. I don't want to think of the writer.
She worded it a bit strongly, but I do find myself more and more struck by the differences between the sexes. To put it another way: All marriages are mixed marriages.
It's true that writing is a solitary occupation, but you would be surprised at how much companionship a group of imaginary characters can offer once you get to know them.
Time, in general, has always been a central obsession of mine - what it does to people, how it can constitute a plot all on its own. So naturally, I am interested in old age.
Farmers are patient men. They got to be. Got to see those seeds come up week by week, fraction by fraction, and sweat it out for some days not knowing yet is it weeds or vegetables.
It seems to me that since I've had children, I've grown richer and deeper. They may have slowed down my writing for a while, but when I did write, I had more of a self to speak from.
Point of view is not something I consciously decide. Almost always, when I come up with a plot I find that the point of view has automatically arrived with it, part and parcel of the story.