A writer turns his life into material, and if you’re in his life, he uses yours, too. — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
My primary ambition is to be a fiction writer... Being a critic wasn't an aspiration of mine. — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
Once you realize just the sort of glut of books that exists out there, it does become incumbent on you not to… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
Size has nothing to do with literature. All legs are long enough to touch the ground, and all books are big enough… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
My mother used to push 'Wuthering Heights' on me as a boy, and I sensed from her breathy description of the story… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
Let the novelists fret about consistency - story writers should feel free to jam; to get things right in new, surprising ways… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
If writers, like comedians or singers, could only hear themselves bombing as they worked, it's likely that certain books would be cut… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
I think of myself as writing realist American fiction. 'Cynical but hopeful' wouldn't be the worst thing I've ever been called. — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
A writer has a use for his experiences that most civilians simply don't; he or she discerns material in situations that others… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
There are two sides to me. One is the writer. That's a savage person who looks at everything as a story and,… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
Novelists who pretend to understand what keeps them scribbling are really just guessing. A profound, unmet childish need to be acknowledged? Maybe.… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
The fictionally correct have all the answers, and that's what's wrong with them. They're artistic technocrats. There's no dilemma so knotty, no… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
When we have a favorite writer, it's always the places where they grew up, lived, worked, and that they recreated on the… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
In fourth grade, I learned that reading was serious business, not just a pleasant way to pass the time, and that like… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
A writer is someone who tells you one thing so someday he can tell his readers another thing: what he was thinking… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
I have very specific advice for aspiring writers: go to New York. And if you can't go to New York, go to… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
“Literature had torn Tessa and me apart, or prevented us from merging in the first place. That was its role in the… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
My advice for aspiring writers is go to New York. And if you can’t go to New York, go to the place… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
I disagree that Blood Will Out is a memoir in the conventional sense. It's the story of a relationship, primarily, not an… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
Size matters in fiction, but so does lack of size. Everything else being equal, fat novels tend to be perceived as serious,… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
I love reference books, especially collections of memorable quotations, world almanacs, and atlases. Facts to me are like candy or popcorn, small,… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
Everyone loves a witch hunt as long as it's someone else's witch being hunted. — Walter Kirn Copy Share
“I just wasn't ready for his stories. They'd breed with the others I'd heard and hatch new monsters, because there was no such thing… — Walter Kirn Copy Share
It's no accident that most self-help groups use 'anonymous' in their names; to Americans, the first step toward redemption is a ritual wiping out… — Walter Kirn Copy Share
“For time to pass it would have to go somewhere, and where would that be? Time sits. We move, it sits. Sometimes it trembles… — Walter Kirn Copy Share
Once you realize just the sort of glut of books that exists out there, it does become incumbent on you not to add to… — Walter Kirn Copy Share
There are two sides to me. One is the writer. That's a savage person who looks at everything as a story and, you know,… — Walter Kirn Copy Share
I remember the first time I went to Italy when I was eighteen, I was in Florence and there were all these eighteen, nineteen,… — Walter Kirn Copy Share
The idea that Americans favor politicians who either remind them of themselves or can imagine what their selves are like because they too have… — Walter Kirn Copy Share
“Our habit of wishing backward from what is to what might have been is the soft but persistent tapping that cracks the crystal.” — Walter Kirn Copy Share
Memo to extreme partisans: If you can't bring yourselves to love your enemies, can you at least learn to hate your friends? — Walter Kirn Copy Share
People can be so neglectful of each other and of their own heritage - then death intrudes. Conversations we wish that we'd had earlier… — Walter Kirn Copy Share
I'd assumed that a deal was a deal when Princeton admitted me, but I was wrong. The price of getting in - to the… — Walter Kirn Copy Share
The reason that last-ditch political maneuvering has become business as usual in Washington is that the actors involved are drunk on blame and are… — Walter Kirn Copy Share
