Notable American Women is a weird nougat of a book that suggests Coetzee, Kafka, Beckett, Barthelme, O'Brien, Orwell, Paley, Borges-and none of them exactly. Finally you just have to chew it for its own private juice. — Padgett Powell Copy Share Image
If you could have a famous writer, dead or alive, write an obituary for you and really puff you up to have been something… — Padgett Powell Copy Share Image
That's part of fiction, creating a world better than the one you live in. — Padgett Powell Copy Share Image
I don't know any more about America than one knows being trapped in it. — Padgett Powell Copy Share Image
I've had an addiction for a long time to the whole business of maximizing one's potential, what I call human activation. The vehicle for… — Padgett Powell Copy Share Image
“the zombies, after all, were pretty slow to appreciate someone other than themselves, and they had been schooled not to denigrate the different. --Mrs. Hollingsworth's Men” — padgett powell Copy Share
Even if you're the worst writer in the world, at least you'll have the evidence. — Padgett Powell Copy Share Image
“ease up. the day was rued when we came upon it, or when it came upon us, and beheld us marring the horizon, sitting… — Padgett Powell Copy Share Image
I knew I was supposed to be a writer; I had made that declaration in the closet of my soul. — Padgett Powell Copy Share Image
“Now she understood a few things: that the American academy, which one might have thought the place to defend freedom of speech, had been the seat and soul of abrogating freedom of speech, if the first assault on its freedom can be said to be restricting, or handcuffing speech. The day she heard “redneck” on NPR, she turned NPR off,… — Padgett Powell Copy Share
