Joan Silber

“If you saw through everything, it made it hard to figure out what to do with yourself.”

— Joan Silber

“So, in the end, we were hypocrites for kindness. Both of us. Standing with my bouquet of orange blossoms, I thought: I'm…

— Joan Silber

“A story is entirely determined by what portion of time it chooses to narrate.”

— Joan Silber

“Slowed time is -- or should be -- a way of pointing to what's important.”

— Joan Silber

“You don't know what you're going to be faithful to in this world, do you? It was true I didn't have what…

— Joan Silber

This is fictional time, where events play out and possibilities are exhausted, so that meaning can emerge.

— Joan Silber

“[S]torytelling, in ancient and modern practice, is always a contemplation of the experience of time passing. A story depends on things not…

— Joan Silber

“Length is weight in fiction, pretty much.”

— Joan Silber

“A story is already over before we hear it. That is how the teller knows what it means.”

— Joan Silber