Andrew Sean Greer

Writing fiction is an act of imaginative empathy.

— Andrew Sean Greer

I'm not despairing of love at all.

— Andrew Sean Greer

We are each the love of someone's life.

— Andrew Sean Greer

Every writer is an outsider.

— Andrew Sean Greer

I've wanted to be a writer since I was, like, 10.

— Andrew Sean Greer

My country is nothing if not diverse.

— Andrew Sean Greer

“You write what you are compelled to.”

— Andrew Sean Greer

I never wanted to be a scientist.

— Andrew Sean Greer

I grew up in the suburbs, which I don't think shaped me very much.

— Andrew Sean Greer

The possibilities. Is there any greater pain to know what could be, and yet be powerless to make it be?

— Andrew Sean Greer

When you were a little girl, Madam…was this the woman you dreamed of becoming?

— Andrew Sean Greer

“Strange to be almost fifty, no? I feel like I just understood how to be young.”

— Andrew Sean Greer

Other writers know what you're going through, what you're talking about when you write.

— Andrew Sean Greer

It may be a childish torment, but we do not get to choose our demons.

— Andrew Sean Greer

“Only in brief flashes does it come to us that we may never see someone again.”

— Andrew Sean Greer

I heard you had to get 200 rejections before you got published.

— Andrew Sean Greer

“We kept each other's stare a long time, for we had each done a startling thing, dodged time for an instant -…

— Andrew Sean Greer

“It is almost another kind of love, being loved. It is the same heat but from another room; it is the same…

— Andrew Sean Greer

“Standing on the deck of a San Francisco ferryboat, in a gray suit so precisely the same colour as the fog that…

— Andrew Sean Greer

“He kisses--how do I explain it? Like someone in love. Like he has nothing to lose. Like someone who has just learned…

— Andrew Sean Greer

I was raised Unitarian, and my mother said she took us to church so that we wouldn't get religious later in life.

— Andrew Sean Greer

To distract myself from writing, I was singing Bob Dylan's 'My Back Pages.' You know, 'I was so much older then; I'm…

— Andrew Sean Greer

I love going to writers' colonies in pastoral settings where there's nothing to do, but either walk around or read a book…

— Andrew Sean Greer

I wake up at 10. I have coffee, and then I spend a half an hour on the computer, where I read…

— Andrew Sean Greer

'The Story Of A Marriage' was initially a short story I wrote, and before that, it was a family story. It was…

— Andrew Sean Greer

You write three pages over six hours, and you don't feel like you've gotten anywhere, but if you've done a beautiful metaphor…

— Andrew Sean Greer

“New York is a city of eight million people, approximately seven million of whom will be furious when they hear you were…

— Andrew Sean Greer

“Why this endless need for a man as a mirror? To see the Arthur Less reflected there? He is grieving, for sure—the…

— Andrew Sean Greer

“Strange to be almost fifty, no? I feel like I just understood how to be young." "Yes! It's like the last day…

— Andrew Sean Greer

You can sort of start to write around 10. You also become a good reader around that time, and you want to…

— Andrew Sean Greer

“A burned-out face trying not to break open at the horror he has seen. The way they look at you, those poor…

— Andrew Sean Greer

It takes too much imagination to see the sorrows of people we take for happy. Their real battles take place, like those…

— Andrew Sean Greer

“How do you make someone love you? For the very young, there can be nothing harder in the world. You may try…

— Andrew Sean Greer

“I say this simply as a woman rattling the cage to be free. And what do I mean by free? Just to…

— Andrew Sean Greer

“Twenty years of joy and support and friendship, that’s a success. Twenty years of anything with another person is a success. If…

— Andrew Sean Greer

“A rosewater smell from the box summoned, instantly, a dictatorial woman with a tight bun, hectoring him with questions. The cut, the…

— Andrew Sean Greer

“He has nothing personal against Christ; though raised Unitarian—with its glaring omission of Jesus and a hymnal so unorthodox that it was…

— Andrew Sean Greer

“People always say the greatest love story in the world is Romeo and Juliet. I don't know. At fourteen, at seventeen, I…

— Andrew Sean Greer

“Margaret herself hadn't known her body was a parish bell tolling at every heartbreak she heard of, and that night with Pete…

— Andrew Sean Greer

“There on the dune, beside the table, one of the camel boys has his arm around the other, and they sit there…

— Andrew Sean Greer