Quotes from Carolyn Chute

Grave silence is far more powerful than the same old voices yapping away.

When we go out in the world together, we don't get beat down.

We need to stay together, to spread the truth like religion. It's a lonely, scary road, and we've got to walk it together.

Sometimes a manuscript is like bread dough. You have to abuse it.

Spend as much time as you can in silence. Look at the way the sun paints the ground gold.

People say, 'Well, why don't they get another job, why don't they pick themselves up by their bootstraps?' Well, the people that say that probably have the kind of jobs where they don't work that hard, so maybe they could have another job.

When I write, I just let my characters go, the way I let life go.

Your community is your survival.

I love people, but I don't do so well in a system. We're poor, and we lead a very different kind of life. We depend on other people so much.

Today's world is very cruel.

I'd rather be a born-once hog than a born-again Christian any day.

I am a person who can't teach writing or make a living in any public way, as I get confused when interrupted or overstimulated. In a classroom or crowded room, I all but blank out. So my only income is from novels.

Because school was so terrible was probably why I was driven to write.

That's the way we see life: your community is your survival. And if you live in a small community like this, even the people you hate you have as friends.

I have lived poverty. I didn't choose it. No one would choose humiliation, pain, and rage.

People who work in factories or in the woods or maybe a dairy farm - for years, I've been fascinated with people like that. No pretensions. They just live their lives. I found them beautiful. They were all I seemed to be interested in writing about.

What poor people go through, it's amazing they don't do more violent things! If they'd just give you a little dignity, it might help you stand it better. They suffer no heat, no electricity, while you're working, but then you've got to face all the insults, too.

With upper- and middle-class lawns, there's more hidden, whereas with working-class or poor lawns, there's more out to see. It just sits right out there. Very honest. Like the people.

When people do come face to face with each other as human beings, they begin to understand each other better.

Whenever I write, I write what I find to be the way people are. I never use any symbolism at all, but if you write as true to life as you possibly can, people will see symbolism. They'll all see different symbolism, but they're apt to because you can see it in life.

I never wanted to be a writer. I still don't.

There's no writer's block; there's only distraction.

When I'm not writing, I do a lot of research reading on the shape of civilization. Fiction can be a lot of different things... but I feel like it's my job to write about the way things are.

I love a big book, but it's what most people like which makes commerce sing.