American Quotes

I just wanted to say hi to Pittsburgh as well because I miss it.

I know that I'm definitely not a big big snob, and I know that at the times that I am a diva I know I'm being a diva. It's kind of annoying to know that you are. Because it's a person I do not want to be. So I'm trying my best not to become a jerk.

I'm aware of cliches and I'm aware of experiments that have been done and I'm aware of a kind of deadness to a lot of realism both in the language and in the structure of a book.

I was unemployable when I got out of college.

I was engrossed with the book, I was having difficulties with it, and I just didn't notice the years were going by.

I was directed because I knew I wanted to be a novelist, but I didn't have a very good job or a way of getting published. I found those years to be among the most difficult of my life.

I think, especially when you're in college, each book that you're reading tends to tell you who you are.

I think the suicides in my first book came from the idea of growing up in Detroit. If you grow up in a city like that you feel everything is perishing, evanescent and going away very quickly.

I studied English literature in the honors program, which means that you had to take courses in various centuries. You had to start with Old English, Middle English, and work your way toward the modern. I figured if I did that it would force me to read some of the things I might not read on my own.

I spend most of every day writing. I like to write every day if I can. I don't start extremely early.

I mean, when I got to Brown, the place was riven, because you had older professors who were basically new critics and had been teaching a certain way for 30 years. And then you had this other gang who was down with the semiotic program. And as a student, you were, in a way, forced to choose which co

I have a very beautiful room that in my house that we bought in Princeton. It's glass on three sides, and you'd think that's the perfect place to write. Somehow in that nice room I feel too exposed, and I can notice I'm too distracted by things going on, so I end up writing in a not-very-nice office

I have a lot of novels that I haven't finished. I usually get 150 pages in and I realize it's not going anywhere. I don't publish everything I write. I must have six unfinished novels at least.

I have a good memory for early life. My visual memory is good about childhood and adolescence, and less good in the last 10 years. I could probably tell you less what happened in the last 10 years. I remember what houses looked like, sometimes they just pop into my head.

I had a briefcase at one point, but it was a kind of 1980s New Wave briefcase. It was made of some kind of cardboard and it had metal hinges. It was kind of faux industrial looking, and I used to carry my books in it rather than a backpack. I didn't want to have normal student accoutrements.

I approach writing female characters the same why I approach writing male characters. I never think I'm writing about women, I think I'm writing about one woman, one person. And I try to imagine what she is like, and endow her with a lot of my own thoughts and history.

I always work in a room where there's no Internet to keep from being distracted so easily.

He knew a lot about his grandparents - and perhaps he feels he's been endowed with abilities to go into people's heads who are long dead - but, to a certain extent, he's making it up.

But I care about the reader, and I'm trying to keep the reader's attention for as long as I can.

Basically you come up with the fictional idea and you start writing that story, but then in order to write it and to make it seem real, you sometimes put your own memories in. Even if it's a character that's very different from you.

At the same time, it's a family story and more of an epic. I needed the third-person. I tried to give a sense that Cal, in writing his story, is perhaps inventing his past as much as recalling it.

A few years ago in Chicago, I rented an office, and I went there every day. For the most part I do work at home in an ugly room.

I want an ending that's satisfying. I'm more of a classical writer than a modernist one in that I want the ending to be coherent and feel like an ending. I don't like when it just seems to putter out. I mean, life is chaotic enough.

I think it is important to remind people of the extent of our free will.

The daily act of writing remains as demanding and maddening as it was before, and the pleasure you get from writing - rare but profound - remains at the true heart of the enterprise. On their best days, writers all over the world are winning Pulitzers, all alone in their studios, with no one watchin

I know that attaching memories to books may be going out of the world, but while it lasts, it's a strong record of your life.

You can tell when something's not moving forward anymore. When the doubts you have about it don't go away.

People see my current success but don't realize I've worked hard to get where I am. I used to clean garbage off the Philadelphia docks and put a lot of time into developing my music.

My love life doesn't stink; it's nonexistent.

James Brown is the reason I play guitar.