Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Literature precedes genre.
The past was so past it hurt.
I love comic books and always did as a kid.
People tend to be scared of what they can't see.
God howls with laughter at earthly plans, you know?
What genre it falls under is only of interest later.
Genre is a bookstore problem, not a literary problem.
I'm not the guy to ask about the most up to date stuff.
Maybe when I'm sixty-five I'll talk about my literary life.
I made this list of stuff that it's time for me to try to do.
Writing the book was itself a process of concealing and revealing.
The point is to balance on the edge between musicality and content.
My contention is that that style is just as stylized as an ornate style.
I turned forty, and Im finally going to get married and maybe have a kid.
I turned forty, and I'm finally going to get married and maybe have a kid.
I suppose I should say that I treasure blasphemy, as a faith of the highest order.
I think literature is best when it's voicing what we would prefer not to talk about.
I am excited by... the new novel by Samantha Hunt. She's a writer I really admire a lot.
The Ice Storm, because of the movie, has had, or is to have, a vigorous life in other cultures.
I'm trying to read more dead people because I keep having to read stuff for juries and so forth.
I judged about a zillion awards this year so Ive been reading a lot of books that just came out.
I judged about a zillion awards this year so I've been reading a lot of books that just came out.
I have worked really hard to defy categorization, to break down a taxonomy whenever it comes my way.
I'm trying to make sure that there's comedy as well as sadness. It makes the sadness more memorable.
I sort of hate the novel when it doesn't push, restlessly, against the tradition and the traditional.
There’s something really rich and powerful in not talking about what you need to talk about sometimes.
I always wanted to write something illustrated, and the Details strip finally gave me the opportunity.
Sadness is simply something to be treated with antidepressant meds and otherwise need not be spoken of.
Impotence, fetishism, bisexuality, and bondage are all facts of life, and our fiction should reflect that.
Nonfiction that uses novelistic devices and strategies to shape the work. That's material that I really like.
Updike worked this way, and I just kinda borrowed it from him. So the memoir will be relief from novel writing for a moment.
I have admired Melissa Pritchard's writing for several years now for its wisdom, its humble elegance, and its earthy comedy.
Tangled in one another's arms and nine times out of ten the things you think about a person make it impossible to touch them.
The process of composition, messing around with paragraphs and trying to make really good prose, is hardwired into my personality.
There is no right or wrong reading of Naked Lunch, though some readings are more common, and thus Burroughs commercial is not the issue.
I don't know exactly how long the book as we know it will exist, but I fully expect to make it to my death without having to give up on books.
I published a bunch of my older books in e-book format with Open Road, which is great and has tons of hard to find older books available there.
All the stuff that I used to treat with contempt - you know, I'm an artist, man, I don't do that family stuff - has begun to seem really important.
If I'm going to feel estranged and alienated and away from home I don't want anyone interrupting it to debate which berries to have in their pancakes.
The idea to make hotel reviews the form of the novel came first. So I just started writing hotel reviews and tried to come up with a consistent voice.
In general, each form is a relief from the other forms. I can't write a novel after a novel. I just use up all the material each time, and I need to rest.
So while it is true that I find really dark stuff funny sometimes, it's also true that as a writer of books I want to have the whole range of human emotions.
I have sparred with commenters as a music writer (on The Rumpus, among other places, see e.g., my review about Taylor Swift), and that was plenty of training!
I believe in choosing the hardest book imaginable. I believe in reading up on what others have to say about this difficult book, and then making up my own mind.
This is odd, but there are certain things that are really embarrassing to talk about - one is my job and the success that I've had in it, and the other is money.
When prose gets too stylized and out of control - and Stein is sometimes a good example - when you don't know what the hell is going on, then it's kind of boring.
I didn't know how to kill off a character unless I was able, as a narrator, to get really complicated. Because it was a big deal. I'd never killed a character before.
It's also true, however, that having conquered the regional writer ghetto, I am now intent on conquering the nationalist writer ghetto and moving out into the world more.
I believe that God locates himself at the spot where you recognize your own fallibility....And the paradox of it all has been that whenever I give up I seem to do better.
I think people on antidepressants often lose sexual feelings. I don't mean that I think sex is only about sadness; it is obviously about joy and vitality and birth as well.