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We do need to bring to our writing, over and over again, all the abundance we possess. To be able, to be ready, to enter into the minds and hearts of ...more

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For the source of the short story is usually lyrical. And all writers speak from, and speak to, emotions eternally the same in all of us: love, pity, ...more

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Both reading and writing are experiences--lifelong-- in the course of which we who encounter words used in certain ways are persuaded by them to be br...more

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Fiction shows us the past as well as the present moment in mortal light; it is an art served by the indelibility of our memory, and one empowered by a...more

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Henry James said there isn't any difference between "the English novel" and "the American novel" since there are only two kinds of novels at all, the ...more

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Great fiction shows us not how to conduct our behavior but how to feel. Eventually, it may show us how to face our feelings and face our actions and t...more

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Human life is fiction's only theme.

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Art, though, is never the voice of a country; it is an even more precious thing, the voice of the individual, doing its best to speak, not comfort of ...more

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Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it’s an early form o...more