Quotes About Authors

John Dos Passos, Raymond Carver, Flaubert and William Maxwell were all very influential when I first started writing. Now, the writers I'm most interested in are the writers who are most unlike me: for example, Denis Johnson.

I never got too specialized but did like the Southern Gothic writers like William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor.

I will read anything at all by Kate Atkinson, Daniel Woodrell, and William Kennedy, who are all fearless.

I love Joy Williams, Lorrie Moore: such great short-story writers.

Even famous poets such as Marianne Moore and William Carlos Williams were rarely asked to read their poems.

Philip Pullman and Jacqueline Wilson have both been writing for a long time. In 30 years, will writers of that quality have been able to serve the same sort of apprenticeship? Not unless they can make enough money now to live on.

A lot of writers fall in love with their sentences or their construction of sentences, and sometimes that's great, but not everybody is Gabriel Garcia Marquez or James Joyce. A lot of people like to pretend that they are, and they wind up not giving people a good read or enlightening them.

I like to read Octavia E. Butler's 'Wild Seed' over and over again. And J. California Cooper's 'The Wake of the Wind.' That one makes me cry from joy. I'll mourn - I'll actually mourn - and then I'll cry from joy. She's wonderful.

Don't spend more than 10% of your marketing/PR budget on a trailer. Trailers have to be marketed, too. So, far too many authors wind up marketing their trailers instead of their books.

I heard Thackeray thank Heaven for the purity of Dickens. I thanked Heaven for the purity of a greater than Dickens - Thackeray himself.

I always write authors after I read their books. I've been doing it for years. I write a formal letter and send it to them in care of their agent. My mother always taught us to write thank you notes, and if an author puts themselves out there, they like to hear that their book connected with someone.

When you read a piece of writing that you admire, send a note of thanks to the author.

Os dois gigantes da literatura passariam a vida próximos um ao outro, mas jamais se encontrariam nem pessoal nem ideologicamente.

O ano de 1866 foi uma espécie de annus mirabilis para Mikhail Kátkov, já que nas páginas de sua revista foram publicados, ao mesmo tempo, Guerra e paz e Crime e castigo. Dostoiévski não era o mais fácil dos escritores, mas nessa época era bem mais responsável que Tolstói.

Foi um episódio notável não porque Tolstói tivesse achado a palestra interessante (ele a desdenhou como "uma baboseira infantil"), mas sim porque foi a única vez em que ele e Dostoiévski estiveram fisicamente próximos um do outro

Short Perfect Novels Too Loud a Solitude, by Bohumil Hrabal Train Dreams, by Denis Johnson Sula, by Toni Morrison

Short Perfect Novels Too Loud a Solitude, by Bohumil Hrabal Train Dreams, by Denis Johnson Sula, by Toni Morrison The Shadow-Line, by Joseph Conrad The All of It, by Jeannette Haien Winter in the Blood, by James Welch Swimmer in the Secret Sea, by William Kotzwinkle The Blue Flower, by Penelope Fitzgerald First Love, by Ivan Turgenev Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf Waiting for the Barbarians, by J. M. Coetzee Fire on the Mountain, by Anita Desai

Short Perfect Novels Too Loud a Solitude, by Bohumil Hrabal Train Dreams, by Denis Johnson Sula, by Toni Morrison The Shadow-Line, by Joseph Conrad The All of It, by Jeannette Haien Winter in the Blood, by James Welch Swimmer in the Secret Sea, by William Kotzwinkle

Dennis Lehane, Donna Tartt, Stephen Graham Jones, Marcie R. Rendon, Kate Atkinson. She gave me The Death of the Heart

Sea of Poppies, by Amitav Ghosh The English Patient, by Michael Ondaatje Euphoria, by Lily King The Red and the Black, by Stendhal Luster, by Raven Leilani Asymmetry, by Lisa Halliday All the Pretty Horses, by Cormac McCarthy

The Uninvited Guests, by Sadie Jones Ceremonies of the Damned, by Adrian C. Louis Moon of the Crusted Snow, by Waubgeshig Rice Father of Lies, by Brian Evenson The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead Asleep, by Banana Yoshimoto The Hatak Witches, by Devon A.

Short Perfect Novels Too Loud a Solitude, by Bohumil Hrabal Train Dreams, by Denis Johnson Sula, by Toni Morrison The Shadow-Line, by Joseph Conrad The All of It, by Jeannette Haien Winter in the Blood, by James Welch Swimmer in the Secret Sea, by William Kotzwinkle The Blue Flower, by Penelope Fitzgerald First Love, by Ivan Turgenev Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf Waiting for the Barbarians, by J. M. Coetzee

Novels Too Loud a Solitude, by Bohumil Hrabal Train Dreams, by Denis Johnson Sula, by Toni Morrison The Shadow-Line, by Joseph Conrad The All of It, by Jeannette Haien Winter in the Blood, by James Welch Swimmer in the Secret Sea, by William Kotzwinkle The Blue Flower, by Penelope Fitzgerald First Love, by Ivan Turgenev Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys

Short Perfect Novels Too Loud a Solitude, by Bohumil Hrabal Train Dreams, by Denis Johnson Sula, by Toni Morrison The Shadow-Line, by Joseph Conrad The All of It, by Jeannette Haien Winter in the Blood, by James Welch Swimmer in the Secret Sea, by William Kotzwinkle The Blue Flower, by Penelope Fitzgerald