Walter Kirn Quotes

American - Novelist August 3, 1962

A writer who isn't writing is asking for trouble.

Who Trouble Writing Asking Writer

Ask Jeeves! Who ever used that thing? College freshmen to find out who Goethe was - that's it.

Who Find College Out Freshmen Goethe Ask Ever Thing Used

At college, I wanted to be a poet. I liked the extremely concentrated language, the atmosphere of otherworldliness.

Language College Atmosphere Poet Concentrated Extremely Liked Wanted

I'm a magpie in my fiction, taking whatever looks shiny and curious to line the nest of my story.

Nest Curious Looks Story Fiction Shiny Line Taking Whatever

When we have a favorite writer, it's always the places where they grew up, lived, worked, and that they recreated on the page that we most want to visit and commune with. Faulkner's Mississippi, Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles, etc. The mind of the reader longs to be somewhere, not just anywhere, and certainly not nowhere.

Top 10
Walter Kirn
Quotes

I think of myself as writing realist American fiction. 'Cynical but hopeful' wouldn't be the worst thing I've ever been called.

Myself Think Writing American Cynical Fiction Hopeful Realist Worst Thing Been Ever I Think Thing Worst

I've noticed that the few times I've traveled first class myself, you've already got your drink, and your coat has been taken by the time the rest of the passengers file on, and it's hard not to feel sorry for them. They're sort of trooping past you like cows to slaughter and you're sitting there in your, you know, wide-body seat.

A sociopath doesn't warm up their environment, doesn't make it cozy. They don't have to; when they're not performing, when they're not manipulating, when they're all alone, there's nothing.

Alone Nothing Environment Cozy Manipulating Performing Warm Make Up

Every generation looks at literature through the lens of their own experience, but with the Bible, everyone gets apprehensive and thinks it'll be too stuffy.

Experience Bible Generation Looks Apprehensive Lens Literature Thinks Every Everyone Gets Own Through Too

God is a freaking character, with enough foibles, tantrums, and paradoxical behaviors to supply a thousand screenplays. But who do you cast?

God You Character Who Behaviors Cast Paradoxical Screenplays Supply Tantrums Thousand Enough

I had the impression from reading English literature that British women were great beauties, and I only had seen Julie Christie, and she was gorgeous and sexy. I don't know whether it was just my taste, but when I got to London, I went two years without seeing a truly attractive woman. A lot of near misses.

Cross the wrong state border with your gun, or wake up one morning to new legislation or a new presidential executive order, and suddenly you're the bad guy, not the good guy. No wonder some gun owners seem so touchy; they feel, at some level, like criminals in waiting.

Size has nothing to do with literature. All legs are long enough to touch the ground, and all books are big enough to fill their covers.

Long Nothing Enough Big Big Enough Covers Fill Ground Legs Literature Size Touch Books

Novelists who pretend to understand what keeps them scribbling are really just guessing. A profound, unmet childish need to be acknowledged? Maybe. It hardly matters, though. The termite that asks itself why it keeps chewing risks becoming sluggish and inefficient, as does the writer who grows self-conscious in the middle of chapter five.

Stopping to think is fine for characters, but not for their creators. They have to work.

Work Think Fine Stopping Creators Characters

My primary ambition is to be a fiction writer... Being a critic wasn't an aspiration of mine.

Ambition Being Mine Writer Aspiration Critic Fiction Fiction Writer Primary

I've come to learn that the determined and gifted and genuine sociopath has far more power to deceive than we realize.

Power More Genuine Realize Deceive Determined Gifted More Power Come Far Learn Than

The reason con artists get away with what they get away with is, their victims are ashamed of their own blindness and their own gullibility, and they tend to just quietly go away.

Go Own Reason Just Ashamed Blindness Con Go Away Quietly Victims Artists Away Get Tend

In the age of networked everything, life moves sideways and covers lots of ground while barely touching the earth.

Life Age Earth Everything Barely Covers Ground Lots Moves Sideways Touching While

To young people born under the weird planet of the SAT, intelligence was equated with agility, with raw acuity. It produced a certain sort of person of which I was a typical specimen: the mental contortionist, able to rise to almost every challenge placed before him, except the challenge of real self-knowledge.

The strange anthropological lesson of social media is that human beings, if given a choice, often prefer to socialize alone.

Alone Social Media Strange Media Beings Human Beings Lesson Prefer Socialize Choice Given Human Often Social

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