Quotes from Peter Orner

Our history is not a continuous line; it's a circle we draw over and over on a blotter. Chicago, Fall River, Chicago. Thomas Carlyle, the man from Arkansas, my own daughter, Thomas Carlyle. Work, not work. The terrors of the sleeper and the helplessness of the awake. [Walt Kaplan/Rachel Plotkin]

My characters tend to be people who are looking back on a life lived, their joys, their regrets.

I beat a story to within an inch of its life - that's when I know its done. Not before, not after.

I agree with the Lev Tolstoy quote completely, but I also feel like there's more to it. What is a happy family and an unhappy family? We're probably both of those things at the same time.

A collection, for me, is a book of very diverse stories that somehow speak to each other, across wide geography, across time, years, decades.

I write when I have something to say and not when I don't. My time is better spent if I know I have nothing to say. I don't consider it writer's block; I just don't have anything to say.

I revise and revise and revise. I'm not even sure "revise" is the right word. I work a story almost to death before it's done.

I've spent a lot of time in prisons, first doing legal work and later, teaching.

Maybe my work is somewhat divided into family stories, things I know intimately, and then everybody else in the world - the strangers who I am totally fascinated with.

But this is exactly why I read--and don't belong to a book group--because reading is the most individual thing there is. Why collectivize it? Didn't we have enough bad English teachers in school? Crowd sourcing and literature shouldn't mix.

The lake is always east. East is always the lake. Anywhere else he's ever been he never knows where he is.

Yeah, I want to retreat from the world and ponder in solitude. At the same time I wouldn't mind at least a couple of people pondering my whereabouts.

The difference between a short story and a novel is the difference between an inarticulate pang in your heart compared to the tragedy of your whole life.

For we are like olives: only when we are crushed do we yield what is best in us.

That's it. I'm asking you, I'm really asking you—how is it possible that we aren't in a permanent state of mourning?

Leo wondered what unknown sin they must have committed in some previous life to deserve this. The answer came the same way their feet later shocked to life in the warming hut after being so numb for hours- you think you'll never feel your toes again, and then all of a sudden life, damaged, stiffened, clammy, but life, dog-eat-dog life! We have not done a single thing to deserve this.

Is this, Miriam wonders, what they call the march of history? And even if she doesn't fully understand, it doesn't mean she can't appreciate the need, the periodic need for some people to resort to gasoline, rags, and matches. Doesn't it always come to this? Isn't history as much about tearing things down as it is about building things up?

Tomorrow I'm going to Wong's, and I'm going to listen to the music of my own lack of thoughts. / Go, Gus says. Nobody's stopping you. / You don't see the beauty? Walt says. / Beauty of what? History of what? Alf says. / Everything. Shoelaces, farts, love, death, cantaloupes--all I have to do is remember. [Walt Kaplan/13 Gus's Highland Spa]

The nature of reaching, the nature of whispered entreaties, a thousand variations on the same invitation, is that both the reaching of hands and the question in question invariably lead to moments of complete incompleteness. Because the upshot of coupling is uncoupling. The essence of association is disassociation. Because you can fuck till you're blue, but at a certain point the inevitable nightly drawing apart happens for good. [Walt Kaplan/23 Kaplan's Furniture]

Considering the multitude of things that happen in any one person's life, it seems fairly unlikely that those little boys remembered the incident for very long. It was an introduction to what was to come. And cruelty could never again take them totally by surprise. But I have remembered it. I have remembered it because it was the moment I learned I was not to be trusted.

It comes down to this. When we die, not only will our bodies be gone, but so will the people we remember. We live in the world, and we recall the world, and one day we won't do either anymore. The church bells will ring and the drunks will drink.

I only want to repeat what you already know. There is no limit to how far a person can fall in America.

Something occurs, in the motion of the present, but it's already over. Because even then, even as she watched, she was already moving away from it, already thinking about how years from now she might tell someone about this.

And I thought, Holy fuck, we're not dead. Together. As in not dead yet. Think of all the years we will be. Our bodies turn to caramel. [Naked Man Hides]