American - Writer | June 27, 1953 -
At the beginning of every semester, I ask my graduate students whether there is something I should read that will help me understand their work.
Alice McDermott
WorkBeginningMeHelpUnderstand
I read a little bit of nonfiction and a lot of poetry. I think of poetry as my shot of whiskey when I don't have time to savor a whole bottle of wine.
TimePoetryThinkWineLittleWhole
The thing that fiction can do is look from the inside out rather than from the outside in. Even memoir leaves me somewhat frustrated. I think now we need a poet to uncover what isn't on the surface.
MeThinkLookNowOutsideNeed
It worries me that undergrads and high school students are forced into books they aren't ready for, like Faulkner's, and then they are afraid of putting their toes in the water again.
WaterSchoolMeHigh SchoolReady
Publishing a short story can sometimes feel like shouting into the dark... your words come out, and then nothing... but I don't think that's why I tend to write novels rather than stories.
WordsStoryThinkShortFeelDark
Read everything. Write all the time. And if you can do anything else that gives you equal pleasure and allows you to sleep soundly at night, do that instead. The writing life is an odd one, to say the least.
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My own 'sentimental favorite' is always the novel I haven't yet written - I suppose that's the one I consider my 'masterpiece' as well.
MasterpieceMy OwnAlwaysOwnWell
I think 'Charming Billy' ultimately is a novel about faith and what we believe in and, above all, what we choose to believe in.
FaithBelieveThinkChooseCharming
Being Irish-American myself, Irish-American material is readily at hand to me.
MyselfMeHandBeingMaterial
I think place and time for me is often a matter of convenience, something I can use to another end rather than something I'm trying to define because it's somehow fascinating to me in itself. It's more what the place can do for the larger goals I have for the work.
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Memory is not pure. Memories told are not pure memories; memories told are stories. The storyteller will change them. I've always been interested in that.
ChangeMemoriesMemoryWillAlways
I've got to hear the rhythm of the sentences; I want the music of the prose. I want to see ordinary things transformed not by the circumstances in which I see them but by the language with which they're described. That's what I love when I read.
LoveMusicLanguageCircumstances
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