Arthur Phillips

Fiction isn't memoir and memoir isn't fiction.

— Arthur Phillips

“Every secret is a wrinkle.”

— Arthur Phillips

I like Shakespeare. I like some of his work a lot.

— Arthur Phillips

When a character bears the same name as the author it's just an invitation to have some fun.

— Arthur Phillips

It was so much easier to be alone, if one could find just the right location.

— Arthur Phillips

I am notorious for always having two beagles with me, in any and all circumstances.

— Arthur Phillips

“You deicde, and you make our night what you want. Brilliant and ours. Stupid and theirs.”

— Arthur Phillips

How much of life could he spend aching? Aching is not a stable condition; it must resolve into something

— Arthur Phillips

“If music can ever restore a lost past, then this was the moment. Redemption! We do crave it. But music is different:…

— Arthur Phillips

Love is not sufficient. It never has been. Stories that claim otherwise are lies. There's always SOMETHING after happily ever after.

— Arthur Phillips

Write. Enjoy writing. Then, and only then, worry about the business end of it. Start loving your hobby, and then you can't…

— Arthur Phillips

As a rule, I am lazy and prefer to avoid anything resembling work, and research feels like work, as opposed to my…

— Arthur Phillips

“She had burned through a fair sampling of manhood trying to find someone, not to make her "happy" - that wasn't the…

— Arthur Phillips

It would be hard to exaggerate Ernest Hemingway's influence over American literature, but his influence on our lives is probably larger still.

— Arthur Phillips

“All of this vain heartbreak that we cling to as important or tragic would one day be revealed - by TV scientists…

— Arthur Phillips

I do worry that it's impossible to write something original, that there's nothing that a human hasn't already thought of. But I…

— Arthur Phillips

The memoir industry is, what's the word? Under regulated. I think it needs to be pruned. If there are too many books…

— Arthur Phillips

“So why did poor artists originally hang around in cafes?" "I don't know. Inspiration from the atmosphere." "Ha! No, you've been tricked,…

— Arthur Phillips

I'm an aesthetic empiricist. If you like something, it doesn't matter who made it. There really is no objective standard other than…

— Arthur Phillips

He fell in love with Manhattan's skyline, like a first-time brothel guest falling for a seasoned professional. He mused over her reflections…

— Arthur Phillips

“The truth is, anyone who puts so much of herself and her life into art as you do must naturally fear any…

— Arthur Phillips

“Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?" wrote Marlowe, the man Shakespeare feared for many years was the better writer,…

— Arthur Phillips

“The strangest thing. I came to the end of other people so quickly. Each new person was like a glass of water,…

— Arthur Phillips

“He considered her ruthless, in his moments of pain, but also in moments of happiness, experienced mere feet from her but bound…

— Arthur Phillips

“But no, music lasted longer than anything it inspired. After LPs, cassettes, and CDs, when matrimony was about to decay into its…

— Arthur Phillips

“He had no illusion that this was bittersweet or somehow necessary to make art. It just burned. Anyone who felt this would…

— Arthur Phillips

“No one ever knew they were old-fashioned; everyone always thought they were up-to-the-minute: Rickety Model T cars weren't rickety when they were…

— Arthur Phillips

“Offstage, she fixed him in place with compliments and ironic bossiness, and he tended not to look at her at all when…

— Arthur Phillips

“...[he] understood that some things mattered and some things did not and that the happy people in this world were those who…

— Arthur Phillips

“All our skill at disproving things is like a wall we build between us and wonder. To jump that wall, you need…

— Arthur Phillips

“How strangely distributed are our scruples. When they are evenly spread across our lives, we are judged good people. Mine, unfortunately, tend…

— Arthur Phillips

Fiction is able to do one thing better than any other art form: it is able to convey a convincing sense of…

— Arthur Phillips

“But music is, at the very minimum, inflammatory, exclusionary, divisive, encouraging of snobbery and solipsism. ”

— Arthur Phillips