Garth Greenwell

Writing the novel felt so private to me! I think publishing a novel is quite public and exposing, and what's a little…

— Garth Greenwell

“At the heart of meaningful teaching, I think, is a relation of selfless love.”

— Garth Greenwell

When I took my first poetry class, I felt that I could understand the relationships between words and the formal qualities of…

— Garth Greenwell

Where the novel makes use of material from my life it does so because it's aesthetically convenient, not because of any allegiance…

— Garth Greenwell

I think one reason I'm drawn to expansive syntax is that arias are so often exercises in extending language as a means…

— Garth Greenwell

I felt a lot of ambivalence about going back to graduate school for a second MFA. The impulse was really the opposite…

— Garth Greenwell

If my novel gets any attention in Bulgaria, it will be as a scandal: a book about a teacher at a famous…

— Garth Greenwell

I am a gay writer, absolutely. And in no way does that fact limit the reach or importance of what I write.

— Garth Greenwell

I think it's harder to avoid reflection on those larger patterns of history or society when they so insistently call into question…

— Garth Greenwell

My first MFA was in poetry, and it was very much part of a professional trajectory leading to life as a professor.…

— Garth Greenwell

I think history is only ever invisible when it abets your sense of self, your desires, your ambitions, when it carries your…

— Garth Greenwell

History is never invisible, finally, though some people seem to work very hard to be willfully blind.

— Garth Greenwell

I guess I've done a lot of different kinds of performing at various times - opera singing, poetry reading, not least high…

— Garth Greenwell

A Heart So White is simply one of the best novels I know. I'm also thrilled by Javier Marías sentences, by how…

— Garth Greenwell

I'm still primarily interested in observing as closely as possible the shifting weather between people. I think the master of this sort…

— Garth Greenwell

Teaching high school was my real training as a novelist: it got me out of my head, and (at least a little)…

— Garth Greenwell

Bulgaria is a fascinating, beautiful, difficult country, and I fell in love with it.

— Garth Greenwell

I'm drawn to fiction that hints at nonfiction, that blurs or seems to blur the boundaries between invention and autobiography.

— Garth Greenwell

I often say that Bernhard, W.G. Sebald, and Javier Marías are my stylistic holy trinity, prose writers who amaze me with their…

— Garth Greenwell

I think history is only ever invisible when it abets your sense of self, your desires, your ambitions, when it carries your…

— Garth Greenwell

Whenever I go to New York I try to soak up as much live music as I can, including as many nights…

— Garth Greenwell

“the whole point of literature, I think, is that it’s the best technology we have for communicating what another person’s life feels…

— Garth Greenwell