American - Author | 1966 -
There's a good chance that in 40 years, after the floods, people zipping by on scavenged jetpacks with their scavenged baseball caps on backwards, I will be in my rocking chair saying bitterly, 'I remember when 'all right' was two words.'
Elizabeth McCracken
GoodWordsBaseballPeopleSaying
I wanted to acknowledge that life goes on but that death goes on, too. A person who is dead is a long, long story.
LifeDeathStoryLongPersonDead
I own an e-reader, but I use it almost exclusively to read things that aren't books - student theses, unbound galleys.
StudentOwnThingsBooksAlmostUse
Short fiction is like low relief. And if your story has no humor in it, then you're trying to look at something in the pitch dark. With the light of humor, it throws what you're writing into relief so that you can actually see it.
LightHumorWritingStoryShortYou
A comic strip that your parents read when they were young is a curious thing: it's an heirloom, and it's also intimate. You peer through windows and look at the things that made your elders laugh, and then you wonder whether the laugh really belongs to you.
CuriousParentsLaughYouLook
I sort of don't believe in closure. In the sense that it doesn't make me feel better to think that something is over.
MeBelieveThinkBetterFeelOver
At my first library job, I worked with a woman named Sheila Brownstein, who was The Reader's Advisor. She was a short, bosomy Englishwoman who accosted people at the shelves and asked if they wanted advice on what to read, and if the answer was yes, she asked what writers they already loved and then suggested somebody new.
JobWomanPeopleLibraryLovedNew
I like seeing my physical progress through a volume, particularly if it's a big book.
ProgressBookSeeingThroughBig
I used to be a writer with superstitions worthy of a professional baseball player: I needed a certain desk chair and a certain armchair and a certain desk arrangement, and I could only get really useful work done between 8 P.M. and 3 A.M. Then I started to move, and I couldn't bring my chairs with me.
WorkBaseballMeChairProfessional
Revising stuff lately, I was shocked to see how often my characters scratched their ankles, felt their feet, and touched their own ears.
FeetSeeOwnEarsStuffShocked
When it comes to other people's writing, my older influences are more powerful than more recent ones, partially because I'm now more worried that I'll suddenly accidentally steal something from another writer.
PeopleWritingPowerfulNowMore
Life likes jokes; life is constantly making jokes, even at the most inopportune moments.
LifeMomentsJokesEvenMostLikes
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