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Narrative 10

I usually get my best writing done at night or at the close of day.

Narrative 10

Don’t write what you know. Write what you can imagine.

Narrative 10

I once heard in a sermon, “Choose the important over the urgent.”

Narrative 10

I’ve found that love has provided my life’s happiest moments.

Narrative 10

A friend of my father’s once told me, “You’ll never be a writer.”

Narrative 10

I know now not to measure my insides against others’ outsides.

Narrative 10

“Nobody asked you to write.” Over time, I realized it was a magic key.

Narrative 10

Love is not something you wait for passively, but a practice.

Notes on Writing a Novel

The ideal way of presenting character is to invite perception.

Of Kin and Kind

Having a sister or a friend is like sitting at night in a lighted house.

Oil

I sometimes have to laugh because even now, as a middle-aged man.

On Fame and the Writer

Perhaps more than ever writers may have two kinds of fame.

On Luck: A Screenwriter’s Education

I found it impossible not to imagine a radiant future for myself.

On Poetry

Poets need to be
in constant touch with the extremes of feeling.

On the Art of Fiction

That, indeed, is very nearly the whole of the higher artistic process.

One of the Great Independents

When he died earlier this year an enormous hole was left in my life.

Pace, Drive, Caring: The Art of Balance

Pensées

The last thing one settles in writing a book is what one should put in first.

Poetry and Ambition

American poetry is afflicted by modesty of ambition.

Poet’s Work

Grandfather advised me: learn a trade. I learned to sit at a desk.

Publishing in the Digital Age

There’s this cool magazine online. They let people read it for free.

Reading

The Interests of a writer and the interests of his readers are never...

Reading Hrabal

The Warsaw Pact invaded in 1968 and soon banned Hrabal’s work.

Reading, Writing, and Leaving Home

Reflections on How Writers Make a Living

Our culture cherishes a fantasy of a certain writerly existence.

Revisiting

I was bold, even reckless, in what I wrote, and in how I wrote it.

Reynolds Price

Russell Chatham the Painter, Recently Hospitalized, Emerges from Seven-Figure Debt and Alcoholism, Ready to Paint

An eye trained only for darkness makes for a lesser path, in art as in life.

Self-Reliance and Other Virtues

The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks.

Shirley Hazzard

We have mysterious inclinations. No one can explain it to us.