words
Other people’s words are the bridge you cross from where you were to wherever you’re going.
“That Crafty Feeling,” in Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays (New York: Penguin, 2010), 102
Don’t let anyone say there aren’t magic words.
The Blazing World (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2014), 17.
A word can be any size.
Interview with Paul Holdengräber, LIVE from the NYPL, March 6, 2013
I’ve recently done a lot of experiments with scrapbooks. I’ll read in the newspaper something that reminds me of or has relation to something I’ve written. I’ll cut out the picture or article and paste it in a scrapbook beside the words from my book. Or, I’ll be walking down the street and I’ll suddenly see a scene from my book and I’ll photograph it and put it in a scrapbook…In other words, I’ve been interested in precisely how word and image get around on very, very complex association lines.
“The Art of Fiction No. 36,” The Paris Review, interviewed by Conrad Knickerbocker, Fall 1965.
Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.
Recounted by Edith Wharton in A Backward Glance (New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, 1934), 249.
A writer lives in awe of words for they can be cruel or kind, and they can change their meanings right in front of you. They pick up flavors and odors like butter in a refrigerator.
“In Awe of Words,” The Exonian, quoted in “Steinbeck,” in Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews (New York: The Viking Press, 1976), 182-83.