Writer Quotes by Walter Kirn

My primary ambition is to be a fiction writer... Being a critic wasn't an aspiration of mine.

— Walter Kirn

A writer turns his life into material, and if you’re in his life, he uses yours, too.

— Walter Kirn

A writer who isn't writing is asking for trouble.

— Walter Kirn

My mother used to push 'Wuthering Heights' on me as a boy, and I sensed from her breathy description of the story…

— Walter Kirn

Size has nothing to do with literature. All legs are long enough to touch the ground, and all books are big enough…

— Walter Kirn

Once you realize just the sort of glut of books that exists out there, it does become incumbent on you not to…

— Walter Kirn

I think of myself as writing realist American fiction. 'Cynical but hopeful' wouldn't be the worst thing I've ever been called.

— Walter Kirn

If writers, like comedians or singers, could only hear themselves bombing as they worked, it's likely that certain books would be cut…

— Walter Kirn

Let the novelists fret about consistency - story writers should feel free to jam; to get things right in new, surprising ways…

— Walter Kirn

Novelists who pretend to understand what keeps them scribbling are really just guessing. A profound, unmet childish need to be acknowledged? Maybe.…

— Walter Kirn

There are two sides to me. One is the writer. That's a savage person who looks at everything as a story and,…

— Walter Kirn

A writer has a use for his experiences that most civilians simply don't; he or she discerns material in situations that others…

— Walter Kirn

I love reference books, especially collections of memorable quotations, world almanacs, and atlases. Facts to me are like candy or popcorn, small,…

— Walter Kirn

I have very specific advice for aspiring writers: go to New York. And if you can't go to New York, go to…

— Walter Kirn

A writer is someone who tells you one thing so someday he can tell his readers another thing: what he was thinking…

— Walter Kirn

Size matters in fiction, but so does lack of size. Everything else being equal, fat novels tend to be perceived as serious,…

— Walter Kirn

When we have a favorite writer, it's always the places where they grew up, lived, worked, and that they recreated on the…

— Walter Kirn

My advice for aspiring writers is go to New York. And if you can’t go to New York, go to the place…

— Walter Kirn

“Literature had torn Tessa and me apart, or prevented us from merging in the first place. That was its role in the…

— Walter Kirn

I disagree that Blood Will Out is a memoir in the conventional sense. It's the story of a relationship, primarily, not an…

— Walter Kirn

The fictionally correct have all the answers, and that's what's wrong with them. They're artistic technocrats. There's no dilemma so knotty, no…

— Walter Kirn

In fourth grade, I learned that reading was serious business, not just a pleasant way to pass the time, and that like…

— Walter Kirn