Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties.”(Interview in Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Eighth Series, ed. George Plimpton, 1988)

Lemties neįmanoma įžvelgti, nebent jei sapnuoji ar esi apsvaigęs iš meilės.

Gender mattered a whole lot less to Shakespeare than it seems to matter to us.

I have pretty thick skin, and I think if you’re going to be in this business, if you’re going to be an actor or a writer, you better have a thick skin.

THAT’S WHAT POWERFUL MEN DO TO THIS COUNTRY – IT’S A BEAUTIFUL, SEXY, BREATHLESS COUNTRY, AND POWERFUL MEN USE IT TO TREAT THEMSELVES TO A THRILL! THEY SAY THEY LOVE IT BUT THEY DON’T MEAN...

We were in a phase, through television and the movies, of living only vicariously. Even faintly sordid silliness excited us if it put us in contact with love.

Self-hatred is worse than loneliness.

Sometimes that’s a year, sometimes it’s 18 months, where all I’m doing is taking notes. I’m reconstructing the story from the back to the front so that I know where the front is.

It is hard work and great art to make life not so serious.

He felt like hearing Mrs. Grogan’s prayer again, and so he went to the girls’ division a little early for his usual delivery of Jane Eyre. He eavesdropped in the hall on Mrs. Grogan’s prayer;...

And what were the rules at St. Cloud’s? What were Larch’s rules? Which rules did Dr. Larch observe, which ones did he break, or replace–and with what confidence?

My principal creative pursuit is so solitary, that to be my age and have a legitimate second career in a collaborative environment is a gratification I never expected,

the cocksuckers’ contingent of the country”—what Danny knew as the dumber-than-dog-shit element, those bully patriots—and they were too set in their ways or too poorly educated (or both) to see beyond the ceaseless flag-waving and...

Many things the gods achieve beyond our judgement,'” said the sorrowful girl. “‘What we thought is not confirmed and what we thought not God contives.

In our hearts… there must abide some pity for those people who have always felt themselves to be separate from even their most familiar surroundings, those people who either are foreigners or who suffer a...

If we live long enough, we become caricatures of ourselves.

I think the sport of wrestling, which I became involved with at the age of 14… I competed until I was 34, kind of old for a contact sport. I coached the sport until I...

I you are lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it.

MAYBE YOU SHOULD BE AN ENGLISH MAJOR. AT LEAST, YOU GET TO READ STUFF THAT’S WRITTEN BY PEOPLE WHO CAN WRITE! YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO ANYTHING TO BE AN ENGLISH MAJOR, YOU DON’T NEED...

To her, … celebrities at the party were not movie stars but the actual characters they’d played. Unfortunately, these movies had overlapped in her mind — to the extent that she’d merged the plots of...

Small towns may revile you, but they have to keep you-they can’t turn you away.

It is your responsibility to find fault with me, it is mine to hear you out. But don’t expect me to change.

Never trust a man with a lunatic wife in an attic,” Richard told me. “And anyone named Heathcliff should make you suspicious.

Once the state starts providing, it feels free to hand out the rules, too!” Larch blurted hastily. …”In a better world…” she began patiently.”No, not in a better world!” he cried. “In this one–in this...

You’ve got to get obsessed and stay obsessed.

The lie, of course, is more interesting.

You can’t learn everything you need to know legally.

When an orphan is depressed,” wrote Wilbur Larch, “he is attracted to telling lies. A lie is at least a vigorous enterprise, it keeps you on your toes by making you suddenly responsible for what...

…friends were more important than lovers – not least for the fact that friendships generally lasted longer than relationships.

If you are lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it.

The way you define yourself as a writer is that you write every time you have a free minute. If you didn’t behave that way you would never do anything.

No one but me ever put a hand on me to feel that baby. No one wanted to put his ear against it and listen…You shouldn’t have a baby if there’s no one who wants...

I take people very seriously. People are all I take seriously, in fact. Therefore, I have nothing but sympathy for how people behave – and nothing but laughter to console them with.

Savor, don’t gorge.

Don’t forget this, too: Rumors aren’t interested in the unsensational story; rumors don’t care what’s true.

Your memory is a monster; you forget—it doesn’t. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you—and summons them to your recall with will of its own. You think...

Good habits are worth being fanatical about.

I’ve always been a fan of the 19th century novel, of the novel that is plotted, character-driven, and where the passage of time is almost as central to the novel as a major minor character,...

For a terrible time of life a teen-ager deceives himself; he believes he can trick the world. He believes he is invulnerable. An adolescent who is an orphan at this phase is in danger of...

A person’s faith goes at its own pace. The trouble with church is the service. A service is conducted for a mass audience. Just when I start to like the hymn, everyone plops down to...

It’s because even a good man can’t always be right, that we need … rules.

Crazy people made him crazy. It was as if he personally resented them giving into madness – in part, because he so frequently labored to behave sanely. When some people gave up the labor of...

More than a half, maybe as much as two-thirds of my life as a writer is rewriting. I wouldn’t say I have a talent that’s special. It strikes me that I have an unusual kind...

YOUR BOREDOM IS YOUR PROBLEM,” said Owen Meany. “IT’S YOUR LACK OF IMAGINATION THAT BORES YOU. HARDY HAS THE WORLD FIGURED OUT. TESS IS DOOMED. FATE HAS IT IN FOR HER. SHE’S A VICTIM; IF...

Keep passing the open windows.

Half my life is an act of revision.

I’ll bet every fucking one of your angels is going to be terrifying!

It doesn’t really matter who said it – it’s so obviously true. Bevore you can write anything, you have to notice something.

Thus we try to keep our heroes alive; hence we remember them.

A novel is always more complicated than it seems at the beginning. Indeed a novel should be more complicated than it seems at the beginning.