Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
How wonderful it was to love something without the compromise of language.
New Yorkers are mostly interested in New York - in case you haven't noticed.
I got $30 from Nation magazine for a poem and $500 for my first book of poems.
There's something frightening about finding a woman who would take your heart.
I wasn't taking myself seriously as a novelist, and then it became my day job.
Because most writers have totally unrealistic concepts of how publishing works.
Birthdays are ghost bounty hunters that track you down to ask, "Que pasa, baby?
I thought, frankly, that it would be more pleasant to write a memoir than it was.
How is it macho that I like to hunt and fish? I've been doing it since I was four.
The reviews are getting better, but they always do, in time, if you're still alive.
I had a concussion I didn't get over for three years. I think that's why I'm goofy.
Yeah, but now suddenly - you know, universities are notoriously market oriented, too.
The fact is, the media never gets off the interstate unless there's a major explosion.
If I can't be fishing or hunting, I want to be in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Your kids inevitably want to move where they had their vacations when they were younger.
The danger of civilization, of course, is that you will piss away your life on nonsense.
It is easy to forget that in the main we die only seven times more slowly than our dogs.
I don't know what psychotherapy does. I have been seeing the same person for 26 years now.
Nothing in the world causes more problems than concepts of ethnic virtue. It's irrelevant.
I should add that I very much enjoy certain cities especially Paris, New York and Chicago.
Either you can do what others want, or you can do what you want to do. That's an easy call.
I wrote 'Legends of the Fall' in nine days, but I had been thinking about it for a few years.
A poet must discover that it’s his own story that is true, even if the truth is small indeed.
You do manage a somewhat religious attitude toward your art. It is a calling rather than a job.
Poetry at its best is the language your soul would speak if you could teach your soul to speak.
We pretend that the brain is binary, like a computer. But it's not. It's completely holographic.
My favorite thing is just walking in the woods. I can do it for days on end without tiring of it.
I've never been a true fan of the short story and have only published a single example of my own.
Poetry, at its best, is the language your soul would speak if you could teach your soul to speak.
Naturally we would prefer seven epiphanies a day and an earth not so apparently devoid of angels.
I think about the sentence a long time, and then I write it. I don't revise it once it's set down.
Writers can write outside their ethnicity or sex depending how open and vulnerable they wish to be.
Barring love I'll take my life in large doses alone--rivers, forests, fish, grouse, mountains. Dogs.
I've never felt influenced by Ernest Hemingway though I suppose there is something inevitable there.
I see more genuine sociability between the races in Mississippi than I see in Michigan. No question.
The world that used to nurse us now keeps shouting inane instructions. That's why I ran to the woods.
You touch things lightly or deeply; you move along because life herself moves, and you can’t stop it.
Strangely, when I totally emerged from this slump I couldn't comprehend how I had almost drowned it it.
Whatever I learned reading 'Scientific American,' nothing can finally compete with your own observations.
I'm actually forced to write about Michigan because as a native of that state it's the place I know best.
I enjoy about 1 out of 100 movies, it's about the same proportion to books published that I care to read.
Michigan is two radically different places - the North and the South which makes for good drama and contrast.
The idea is to eat well and not die from it - for the simple reason that that would be the end of your eating.
Fate has never ladled out hardship very evenly, and this frequently trips our often infantile sense of justice.
Writing as a woman presents enormous problems but I have attempted it several times and haven't had many complaints.
Marriage is survived just on the basis of ordinary etiquette, day in and day out. Also cooking together helps a lot.
Sometimes literary critics review the book they wanted you to write, not the book you wrote, and that's very irksome.
Dad said I would always be "high minded and low waged" from reading too much Ralph Waldo Emerson. Maybe he was right.
That is simply the most beautiful publishing office in the world, with that cranky old building in that wonderful park.
The wilderness does not make you forget your normal life so much as it removes the distractions for proper remembering.