“Most writer interviews are not art at all, but a sort of cultural packaging. The cages are too small, the questioner’s powers too sweeping; what we want to know obliterates what the speaker wants to say.”
Wilfrid Sheed
more infosource: “The Interview as Art,” in The Good Word and Other Words (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1978), 211.
category: interview, media, writer
medium: Book review
notes: beautiful essay about Sheed's writing published by Dwight Garner here
“Were all these writers and artists more fragile than ordinary human beings or do we just know their names? It does seem as if there is a peril association with gift, a proclivity to break your brain just as professional skiers may be apt to break their legs as they swoop downward through wind and snow. It may be that to see and tell the story of human error is to dare to expose yourself to the sacred flash of truth that can drive you mad. Or are you mad to try in the first place?”
Anne Roiphe
more infosource: Art and Madness: A Memoir of Lust Without Reason (New York: Nan A. Talese, 2011), 182–83.
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category: artist, creativity, gift, madness, writer
medium: Memoir
“Beware of a writer quoting too much; he may be quoting all he knows.”
Alfred Kazin
more infosource: January 8, 1941 entry, Alfred Kazin’s Journals, selected and edited by Richard M. Cook (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011), 23.
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category: beware, quotation, writer
medium: Journal
notes: via Dwight Garner's Twitter feed
“I always think that everybody is getting their ideas in the shower and the people who are writing them down, keeping the soggy notes, are the writers.”
Lorrie Moore
more infosource: “Scott Spencer,” interviewed by Lorrie Moore, BOMB magazine, Issue 67, Spring 1999.
category: creative process, idea, shower, writer
medium: Interview
“It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.”
E. B. White
more infosource: Charlotte’s Web (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), full color edition, 184.
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category: children's story, friendship, writer
medium: fiction
via: Neil Steinberg“The sentence is the greatest invention of civilization. To sit all day long assembling these extraordinary strings of words is a marvelous thing. I couldn’t ask for anything better. It’s as near to godliness as I can get.”
John Banville
more infosource: “The Art of Fiction No. 200,” interviewed by Belinda McKeon, in Issue 188 of The Paris Review, 2009.
category: invention, sentence, writer, writing
medium: interview
notes: view transcript here
via: Bill Roorbach“It is sometimes necessary to be silent for months before the central image of a book can occur. I do not write every day, I read every day, think every day, work in the garden every day, and recognize in nature the same slow complicity. The same inevitability. The moment will arrive, always it does, it can be predicted but it cannot be demanded. I do not think of this as inspiration. I think of it as readiness. A writer lives in a constant state of readiness. For me, the fragments of the image I seek are stellar; they beguile me, as stars do, I seek to describe them, to interpret them, but I cannot possess them, they are too far away.”
Jeanette Winterson
more info“Never demean yourself by talking back to a critic, never. Write those letters to the editor in your head, but don’t put them on paper.”
Truman Capote
more infosource: The Paris Review Interviews, vol. I (New York: Picador, 2006), 33.
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category: advice, critic, demean, editor, writer
medium: interview
notes: Originally published in Issue 16 of The Paris Review, 1957.
“The first book is always the most fun, because when you write your first book you’re just a writer. Then you get published. Then you become an author, and once you’re an author the whole thing changes. You have a track record. You have a public. A certain literary persona. You can become very self-conscious and start to compete with yourself. No fun at all.”
Richard Price
more infosource: The Paris Review Interviews, vol. I (New York: Picador, 2006), 383.
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category: author, compete, first book, fun, persona, publishing, self-conscious, track record, writer, writing
medium: interview
notes: Originally published in Issue 138 of The Paris Review, 1996.
“The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof, shit detector. This is the writer’s radar and all great writers have had it.”
Ernest Hemingway
more infosource: The Paris Review Interviews, vol. I (New York: Picador, 2006), 61.
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category: bullshit, crap, gift, radar, shockproof, writer
medium: interview
notes: Originally published in Issue 18 of The Paris Review, 1958.
“The test of whether or not a writer has divined the natural shape of his story is just this: After reading it, can you imagine it differently, or does it silence your imagination and seem to you absolute and final? As an orange is final. As an orange is something nature has made just right.”
Truman Capote
more infosource: The Paris Review Interviews, vol. I (New York: Picador, 2006), 20–21.
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category: nature, orange, shape, story, writer
medium: interview
notes: Originally published in Issue 16 of The Paris Review, 1957.
“As for me, I’d like to have money. And I’d like to be a good writer. These two can come together, and I hope they will, but if that’s too adorable, I’d rather have money.”
Dorothy Parker
more infosource: The Paris Review Interviews, vol. I (New York: Picador, 2006), 14.
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category: money, wealth, writer
medium: interview
notes: Originally published in Issue 13 of The Paris Review, 1956.
“When things are going well, you do have the sense that what you’re writing is being fed to you in some way. Auden compared writing a poem to cleaning an old piece of slate until the letters appear. The only way you could reveal your god is perhaps under hypnosis. It’s sacred and it’s secret, even to the writer.”
Martin Amis
more infosource: The Paris Review Interviews , vol. III (New York: Picador, 2008), 345–46.
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category: Auden, creativity, poetry, writer, writing
medium: interview
notes: Originally published in Issue 146 of The Paris Review, 1998. Interview conducted by Francesca Riviere.
“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.”
John Steinbeck
more infosource: “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.
category: butter, flavor, odor, words, writer, writing
medium: nonfiction
“Each book I’ve written has started off with what I’d call a buzz in the head. A certain kind of music or rhythm, a tone. Most of the effort involved in writing a novel for me is trying to remain faithful to that buzz, that rhythm. It’s a highly intuitive business. You can’t justify it or defend it rationally, but you know when you’ve struck a wrong note, and you’re usually pretty certain when you’ve hit the right one.”
Paul Auster
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