If the rules of a language are followed, words usually make sense. But these very rules can stir the impulse to rebel. We're obliged to keep trying to convey meaning through correct sentences. After a while, the good-soldier rigidity of… — Joanna Scott Copy Share Image
How wonderful it would be to scatter words as they rise to consciousness, to let them lie where they fall. — Joanna Scott Copy Share
Writing that flirts with incoherence can just as readily flounder as writing characterized by simplicity and composure. There is no reliable formula for originality,… — Joanna Scott Copy Share
I don't think Donald Barthelme would have minded being called a confusing writer. Confusion was a favorite subject for him in his essays and… — Joanna Scott Copy Share
Vladimir Nabokov on 'Bleak House' or Henry James on 'The House of the Seven Gables' prove that reading can be an exciting subject in… — Joanna Scott Copy Share
With prurient absorption and only minimal risk, we can pretend to be the subject of the lead article on the front page of the… — Joanna Scott Copy Share
The novelist in me is probably hiding behind all the stories I write, looking for ways to connect them and continue the conversation with… — Joanna Scott Copy Share
Whether art is defined as a representation of or response to reality, it demands an intense engagement with things we haven't managed to understand… — Joanna Scott Copy Share
The best liars lie with their eyes rather than with their words. This might put writers at a disadvantage. — Joanna Scott Copy Share
Jim Longenbach, poet, critic, and my husband, is always passing along life-changing books for me to read. — Joanna Scott Copy Share
In the early 1980s, I spent a year working as an assistant at the Elaine Markson Literary Agency. — Joanna Scott Copy Share
Reviewers try to square the antics of a writer's life with the antics in the fiction. Even satirical verbal play is too often read… — Joanna Scott Copy Share
When we really start searching for the truth in stories, we can find it everywhere, not just in sincere confessions but in the deliberate… — Joanna Scott Copy Share
There are plenty of writers, past and present, from Shakespeare to Henry James to Lydia Davis, who test the limits of coherence and put… — Joanna Scott Copy Share
The past is full of examples of renegade writers who were overlooked in their time not only because their work didn't fit neatly into… — Joanna Scott Copy Share
My first two books, I was very close to my main character, stuck inside their head. And then with 'Arrogance,' I broke into many… — Joanna Scott Copy Share
