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 Copy Share Image
“We were all journalists, professional truth-seekers, but one thing we knew about the truth that laymen were prone to disregard was that… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
Writing about the future and the past is less a way of dramatizing change than of showing, by way of contrast, what… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
At the beginning of a novel, a writer needs confidence, but after that what's required is persistence. These traits sound similar. They… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
A writer turns his life into material, and if you’re in his life, he uses yours, too. — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
Most writers' view of the New West is either phony - obsessed with the same tired mythology - or it's obsessed with… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
One of the saddest things about publishing is how quickly it ages what it touches. The frenzy involved in getting books on… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
I read somewhere once that in the 1960s, fiction writers were troubled by the notion that life was becoming stranger and more… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
When I was writing about the Republican primaries, it was as though the Bible was a black box that people reached into… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
A writer is someone who tells you one thing so someday he can tell his readers another thing: what he was thinking… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
“@bobbybaird i'm a writer, so are you. we try to compose our thoughts and words for effect as well as sense. vain… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
Let the novelists fret about consistency - story writers should feel free to jam; to get things right in new, surprising ways… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
Literary dementia seems dated now, but there was a time when a month in the funny farm was as de rigueur for… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
realized that at a level I'd never been conscious we'd been engaged in a game of wits for years. I suppose most… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
My primary ambition is to be a fiction writer... Being a critic wasn't an aspiration of mine. — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
Everyone loves a witch hunt as long as it's someone else's witch being hunted. — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
“I just wasn't ready for his stories. They'd breed with the others I'd heard and hatch new monsters, because there was no such thing… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
It's no accident that most self-help groups use 'anonymous' in their names; to Americans, the first step toward redemption is a ritual wiping out… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
“For time to pass it would have to go somewhere, and where would that be? Time sits. We move, it sits. Sometimes it trembles… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
Once you realize just the sort of glut of books that exists out there, it does become incumbent on you not to add to… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
There are two sides to me. One is the writer. That's a savage person who looks at everything as a story and, you know,… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
I remember the first time I went to Italy when I was eighteen, I was in Florence and there were all these eighteen, nineteen,… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
The idea that Americans favor politicians who either remind them of themselves or can imagine what their selves are like because they too have… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
“Our habit of wishing backward from what is to what might have been is the soft but persistent tapping that cracks the crystal.” — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
Memo to extreme partisans: If you can't bring yourselves to love your enemies, can you at least learn to hate your friends? — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
People can be so neglectful of each other and of their own heritage - then death intrudes. Conversations we wish that we'd had earlier… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
