Walter Kirn

The most beautiful faces have some ugly in them.

— Walter Kirn

Just breathing can be such a luxury sometimes.

— Walter Kirn

“The atom was split by persistence.”

— Walter Kirn

“Thoughts are thoughts and that's all they are.”

— Walter Kirn

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

— Walter Kirn

I preferred that my bad dreams be vague.

— Walter Kirn

Quiet cunning bested boastful brawn

— Walter Kirn

“[T]he anti-vitriol vitriol is getting ugly.”

— Walter Kirn

“I sensed the presence of wizened bachelor potters working in sheds behind their mothers’ houses.”

— Walter Kirn

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

— Walter Kirn

“They lived in a blurry world, those two, where clear, consistent intentions weren't required.”

— Walter Kirn

A writer turns his life into material, and if you’re in his life, he uses yours, too.

— Walter Kirn

Everyone loves a witch hunt as long as it's someone else's witch being hunted.

— Walter Kirn

I feel like my head is finally the right size. I feel like it finally fits around my mind.

— Walter Kirn

I still believe in love. I always will. It's my blessing and my burden.

— Walter Kirn

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

— Walter Kirn

In a world that's smarter than it used to be and, in some ways, smarter than it ought to be, stupidity has…

— Walter Kirn

Requesting permission from someone to be honest is really a way of accusing the other person of being so demanding or overbearing…

— Walter Kirn

It's been a concern of mine for years that the mainstream media coverage of culture and politics takes place in two nodes,…

— Walter Kirn

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

— Walter Kirn

When I was writing about the Republican primaries, it was as though the Bible was a black box that people reached into…

— Walter Kirn

The future of time, of how it's won or lost, endured or enjoyed, expanded or compressed, will depend on how it's valued,…

— Walter Kirn

According to the perverse aesthetics of artistic guilty pleasure, certain books and movies are so bad - so crudely conceived, despicably motivated…

— Walter Kirn

I like to think that I could praise the good book of someone I personally dislike. I try not to comment on…

— Walter Kirn

I read somewhere once that in the 1960s, fiction writers were troubled by the notion that life was becoming stranger and more…

— Walter Kirn

The idea that Americans favor politicians who either remind them of themselves or can imagine what their selves are like because they…

— Walter Kirn

I review books as a day job, and through the years I've come to view the contemporary memoir as, almost always, a…

— Walter Kirn

The success that Americans are said to worship is success of a specific sort: accomplished not through hard work, primarily, but through…

— Walter Kirn

We're on Twitter with one side of our personality, and Facebook with another, and LinkedIn with another side of our personality, and…

— Walter Kirn

I remember the first time I went to Italy when I was eighteen, I was in Florence and there were all these…

— Walter Kirn

Cross the wrong state border with your gun, or wake up one morning to new legislation or a new presidential executive order,…

— Walter Kirn

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

The best critic needn't be right, just interesting.

— Walter Kirn

“I could see tall ideas standing up behind his eyes.”

— Walter Kirn

Art, art of any kind, shows that folks are trying.

— Walter Kirn

The market is the only critic that matters.

— Walter Kirn

“Our faith was a flickering flame.”

— Walter Kirn

“Frustration comes from fighting your own momentum.”

— Walter Kirn

“Liars are exhausting people.”

— Walter Kirn

Love is a powerful painkiller.

— Walter Kirn