The story is always in service to the characters, and is only as long or short, or neat or ragged as it needs to be. — Stewart O'Nan Copy Share Image
My main question that I ask of my characters is, 'What does it feel like to be you? And how do you get through the day? Where do you find the hope and faith to endure getting through the days,… — Stewart O'Nan Copy Share Image
The happiest she'd ever been was with him, and the saddest. Was that the true test of love? — Stewart O'Nan Copy Share Image
It is not brilliance or facility that is necessary, but the determination to bear and even enjoy the dull process of wading into one's… — Stewart O'Nan Copy Share Image
You couldn't relive your life, skipping the awful parts, without losing what made it worthwhile. You had to accept it as a whole--like the… — Stewart O'Nan Copy Share Image
I always squirm when I read what's called 'creative nonfiction,' and the writer is lobbing gobs of emotion and language at the world, hoping… — Stewart O'Nan Copy Share Image
Local teenagers killed in a car crash is a suburban legend, a stock plot line. — Stewart O'Nan Copy Share Image
“He could no longer be that Ed Larsen, but, through a lack of imagination or just sheer exhaustion, he couldn't come up with a… — Stewart O'Nan Copy Share Image
“They should." "Should be like a wood bee," she said. It was a private joke, a mocking appreciation of the slipperiness of even the… — Stewart O'Nan Copy Share Image
I'm not sure the risks I take are any different from what other writers take, since we all serve at the pleasure of the… — Stewart O'Nan Copy Share Image
“Come then, come with us, out into the night. Come now, America the lovesick, America the timid, the blessed, the educated, come stalk the… — Stewart O'Nan Copy Share Image
“Often, as she leafed through the sticky, plastic-coated pages, spotting herself with a frizzy perm or wearing a loud, printed blouse, she was struck… — Stewart O'Nan Copy Share Image
As a fiction writer, my favorite tools are my imagination and the peculiar opportunities offered by different points of view. — Stewart O'Nan Copy Share Image
