As a writer you can and should expect to hear conflicting responses to your story. — John Dufresne Copy Share Image
The landscape of childhood shapes us as it shapes the characters in our stories. You never forget the sacred places of your… — John Dufresne Copy Share Image
The regional tags are often pejorative and dismissive. Don't think of place-bound stories, in other words, but of stories with a strong… — John Dufresne Copy Share Image
Reading is also a creative activity if you're doing it right. You can learn more from a story that's left the tracks… — John Dufresne Copy Share Image
Writing a story, you understand, is not done by consensus. But we do learn from each other, and we remind ourselves how… — John Dufresne Copy Share Image
Love is anticipation and memory, uncertainty and longing. It’s unreasonable, of course. Nothing begins with so much excitement and hope and pleasure… — John Dufresne Copy Share Image
What you create when you're teaching fiction writing is a kind of literary salon, not a social club or a mutual admiration… — John Dufresne Copy Share Image
Reading honest literature makes you love the world. Knowledge and understanding are love. Reading educates our feelings and enhances our sympathy. When… — John Dufresne Copy Share Image
We read novels because we need stories; we crave them; we can’t live without telling them and hearing them. Stories are how… — John Dufresne Copy Share Image
You lose a wallet or keys or something and you notice in a second, but your life can go missing and you don't even… — John Dufresne Copy Share Image
“At 9:15 on Thursday morning, June 4, while Jordan Delreese was bludgeoning his two young children to death, I was sitting in Dr. Hamburger's… — John Dufresne Copy Share Image
You will feel discouraged; you will lose confidence in your abilities; you will be bored with the characters–and the only way to overcome these… — John Dufresne Copy Share Image
There were the fairy tales my father told to me at bedtime. All the standards. I thought my father invented wolves. — John Dufresne Copy Share Image
If you think about it, fiction is nothing more than gossip about the people you've made up. — John Dufresne Copy Share Image
I revise like crazy. I start revising before the pen hits the paper. — John Dufresne Copy Share Image
“I loved her for what I couldn't understand about her. Love searches for the mystery in the beloved, seeks the unknowable.” — John Dufresne Copy Share Image
“I told her how I thought you could always revise your life, how you could work and work on it, finesse the details, see… — John Dufresne Copy Share Image
I write with a fountain pen. And then revise word by word and line by line so that the first draft of a scene… — John Dufresne Copy Share Image
