Joanna Scott

As children know, there's lots of fun in nonsense. We never stop benefiting from staying flexible, open and responsive, even in the…

— Joanna Scott

Masks are wonderfully paradoxical in this way: while they may hide the physical reality, they can show us how a person wants…

— Joanna Scott

In the ongoing celebration that is literature, we are asked to imagine ourselves as other selves, for better or worse.

— Joanna Scott

In the early 1980s, I spent a year working as an assistant at the Elaine Markson Literary Agency.

— Joanna Scott

The best liars lie with their eyes rather than with their words. This might put writers at a disadvantage.

— Joanna Scott

As entertainment, fiction may offer momentary relief from the stresses of reality.

— Joanna Scott

How wonderful it would be to scatter words as they rise to consciousness, to let them lie where they fall.

— Joanna Scott

Jim Longenbach, poet, critic, and my husband, is always passing along life-changing books for me to read.

— Joanna Scott

My first two books, I was very close to my main character, stuck inside their head. And then with 'Arrogance,' I broke…

— Joanna Scott

Complex literary works demand an effort from the reader that is becoming harder to justify, given the sink-or-swim pressures to make profitable…

— Joanna Scott

Writing that flirts with incoherence can just as readily flounder as writing characterized by simplicity and composure. There is no reliable formula…

— Joanna Scott

“But I think it's useful to note that at any particular point in our lives our minds are full not just of…

— Joanna Scott

There's a point I set for myself, and it's an arbitrary point, when I think no matter happens, I'm going to finish…

— Joanna Scott

'Out of Africa,' Dinesen's second book, is a love story, though not the one portrayed by Streep and Redford in the film.…

— Joanna Scott

When we really start searching for the truth in stories, we can find it everywhere, not just in sincere confessions but in…

— Joanna Scott

Vladimir Nabokov on 'Bleak House' or Henry James on 'The House of the Seven Gables' prove that reading can be an exciting…

— Joanna Scott

If the rules of a language are followed, words usually make sense. But these very rules can stir the impulse to rebel.…

— Joanna Scott

Whether art is defined as a representation of or response to reality, it demands an intense engagement with things we haven't managed…

— Joanna Scott

I'm really such a bumbler! Writing fiction is like arranging furniture in a dark room. I can't see what I'm doing. I…

— Joanna Scott

While it can be pleasurable to move speedily through a work of fiction, there's a different sort of pleasure to be had…

— Joanna Scott

When we read about reading, we get to share an experience that is usually kept private. Incisive descriptions of reading help us…

— Joanna Scott

I don't think Donald Barthelme would have minded being called a confusing writer. Confusion was a favorite subject for him in his…

— Joanna Scott

With prurient absorption and only minimal risk, we can pretend to be the subject of the lead article on the front page…

— Joanna Scott

Reviewers try to square the antics of a writer's life with the antics in the fiction. Even satirical verbal play is too…

— Joanna Scott

I feel there has to be a certain amount of improvisation as I'm writing, which means any idea or any commitment to…

— Joanna Scott

The novelist in me is probably hiding behind all the stories I write, looking for ways to connect them and continue the…

— Joanna Scott

The past is full of examples of renegade writers who were overlooked in their time not only because their work didn't fit…

— Joanna Scott

There are plenty of writers, past and present, from Shakespeare to Henry James to Lydia Davis, who test the limits of coherence…

— Joanna Scott

Telling ourselves that fiction is in a sense true and at the same time not true is essential to the art of…

— Joanna Scott