The first fiction I ever wrote was short stories. I was writing short stories in my late teens and early twenties, and I think it's how you teach yourself to write. — Jess Walter Copy Share Image
I teach in M.F.A. programs now, and I think that's a great way to become a novelist, but I mourn that Pete Dexter and Joan Didion's route is maybe less likely because there are fewer of those jobs. I always… — Jess Walter Copy Share Image
For many people it's Facebook, or sports on TV, whatever it is. I have my own demons that I battle. But whatever they are,… — Jess Walter Copy Share Image
Without sounding overly sentimental about the process, I'd say trying to describe how you tend to conceive of a book is like describing how… — Jess Walter Copy Share Image
“What person who has enjoyed life could possibly think one is enough?” — Jess Walter Copy Share Image
For me, movies and television are interesting because they are the dominant storytelling form of our time. My first love will always be fiction,… — Jess Walter Copy Share Image
In seventh grade, with some vague sense that I wanted to be a writer, I crouched in the junior high school library stacks to… — Jess Walter Copy Share Image
“There would seem to be nothing more obvious, more tangible and palpable than the present moment. And yet it eludes us completely. All the… — Jess Walter Copy Share Image
People sometimes ask who I would cast in my books and I never have any idea. I don't think I could ever write a… — Jess Walter Copy Share Image
“A writer needs four things to achieve greatness, Pasquale: desire, disappointment, and the sea.” — Jess Walter Copy Share Image
“And Pasquale forced himself to look away from her then. It was like prying a magnet off steel, but he did it: he turned… — Jess Walter Copy Share Image
I've been simultaneously drawn to and repelled from Hollywood for years. — Jess Walter Copy Share Image
I cling to the idea that Herman Melville had to work at the end of his career watching ships in a dock, as a… — Jess Walter Copy Share Image
