Writer Quotes by Alice McDermott

9 Writer quotes by Alice McDermott

All Writer quotes Alice McDermott’s page

McDermott’s elegant prose shines even in short bursts. Nine brief quotes reveal her nuanced, evocative approach to the writer’s art.

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The writing itself is the thing that generates stories for me.

Alice McDermott

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A good writer sells out everybody he knows, sooner or later.

Alice McDermott

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When I'm not writing, I can't make sense of out anything. I feel the need to make some sense and find some…

Alice McDermott

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Without explaining why, and, most of all, without naming other authors or books, I can only say my novels are influenced by…

Alice McDermott

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Language is the writer's only tool - we really don't have anything else - but our language contains within it our entire…

Alice McDermott

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“Mary lifted her own steno book. Only about six pages old, it still had its cool, slim heft and straight cardboard covers.…

Alice McDermott

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Fiction that intends to be something other than entertainment has a certain obligation, I think, to convince the reader, every time, that…

Alice McDermott

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“I suppose I've never set out to write a novel in which nothing happens . . . only to write a novel…

Alice McDermott

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As a writer, I'm too busy and worried to experience the delight while composing my own work, although, of course, I hope…

Alice McDermott

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More by Alice McDermott

“Some vestige of his race or of his sex made him think, whenever he looked out across the ocean: As it was before me…

Alice McDermott

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“If you want to see how far we have not come from the cave and the woods, from the lonely and dangerous days of…

Alice McDermott

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“John Keane pressed his chest to the steering wheel as he put the key in the ignition, taking a deep breath as he did,…

Alice McDermott

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“The fourth contraction seized her and suddenly she was perspiring. She heard herself cry out and then she heard the children’s voices like sparks…

Alice McDermott

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“THE TINY SPIDERS that lived in the higher branches of the downed tree (which now meant the branches that lay on the other side…

Alice McDermott

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What makes a sentence, a phrase, a moment, or a scene delightful? Something about recognizing the truth in it, hearing the music in it,…

Alice McDermott

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“Michael had slipped beyond the crest of the dune. Jacob was lying flat out now, on his stomach, his little men all before him,…

Alice McDermott

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“The wind,” Mary said again. “It was making everyone tear up.”

Alice McDermott

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“Not a soul,” Mary Keane said to her husband, the wind lifting her words, tossing them gently back over her shoulder, the way it…

Alice McDermott

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“There wasn’t a tear to be seen on the faces of the men and women in the street as the two of them walked…

Alice McDermott

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“His love for his children bore down on his heart with the weight of three heavy stones. There were all his unnamed fears for…

Alice McDermott

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“Mr. Persichetti knew that six weeks before its time and with a good thirty-minute ride to the hospital once the ambulance came (would it…

Alice McDermott

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“Mike Shea became a medic during the war and was now married, working for Pfizer. To this day he can’t look at her straight.…

Alice McDermott

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As a writer, I'm too busy and worried to experience the delight while composing my own work, although, of course, I hope a reader…

Alice McDermott

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“Why not?” but without conviction, confirming for them both that this was a sudden impulse that most likely would not last out the afternoon.…

Alice McDermott

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