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"In the books I find the thrum of everything unsayable. The characters weep the way I want to, love the way I want to, cry, die, beat their breasts, and bray with life."

"My problem as a writer is that—whenever I meet someone for the first time—I immediately invent for them a personality and background that are invariably more interesting than the ones they possess. An..."

"She had a way about her that spoke of homemade bread, and caring for people, and the kind of patience that women have when they help a ewe birth a lamb, or stay up in the night with a baby calf bawlin..."

"Experience-taking changes us by allowing us to merge our own lives with those of the characters we read about. It doesn’t happen all the time. It only occurs when people are able, in a sense, to forge..."

"Perhaps this is what Henry James meant when he talked about the “irresponsibility” of characters. Characters are irresponsible, art is irresponsible when compared to life, because it is first and fore..."

"The best stories come from deep within us and are of us. Either our inner child comes out to play and makes all things possible, or we mold our characters and events from our own experiences, or our d..."

"You live like comfortable strangers. Like characters in a play."

"The worst part of writing is meeting all these great new characters and having no one to talk about (the adventures you share with) them."

"The reality I submerse myself in when writing, is far greater than the physical reality surrounding me at work!"

"It [the Harlem Renaissance] was a time of black individualism, a time marked by a vast array of characters whose uniqueness challenged the traditional inability of white Americans to differentiate bet..."