Lynne Tillman

There may be an art to conversation, and some are better at it than others, but conversation's virtue lies in randomness and…

— Lynne Tillman

I'd studied English literature and American history, but the English literature, which I thought was going to be helpful to me in…

— Lynne Tillman

I subject my sentences and the words to a kind of Grand Inquisition.

— Lynne Tillman

Laughing and crying are very similar. Sometimes people go from laughing to crying, or crying to laughing. I remember being at someone's…

— Lynne Tillman

[Reality] isn't simply the so-called world that you're in. Your reality is a much larger one that takes in all matter of…

— Lynne Tillman

I write about what I'm thinking about. I write about what is bothering me or what is a political, aesthetic, or ethical…

— Lynne Tillman

My friends and I sometimes laugh at each other that there is so much maintenance of a body. I paid no attention…

— Lynne Tillman

I'm interested in reality but I'm not interested in realism at all.

— Lynne Tillman

In a practical sense, pain kept me from sitting down as much, so that sometimes I would have to stand to write.…

— Lynne Tillman

I'm bothered, as a reader, when I feel the writer is filling in too much. Again, whether it's nonfiction or fiction, I…

— Lynne Tillman

It wasn't that I wanted to be an artist. But when I took my first drawing class with the painter Doug Ohlson,…

— Lynne Tillman

I'm interested in reality but I'm not interested in realism at all. I'm interested in the ways that I think people want…

— Lynne Tillman

It's true you have to screen out a lot living in the city. I stayed away from New York for a long…

— Lynne Tillman

Kafka wrote the great line: "my education has damaged me in ways I do not even know." And that's always been a…

— Lynne Tillman

There are lots of unlikable characters in literature. It doesn't mean they're not fascinating.

— Lynne Tillman

People, no matter the economic class, find ways to feed their narcissism.

— Lynne Tillman

I think that sense of surprise, that you don't know where something is going, or what's going to happen, even as you…

— Lynne Tillman

I think I'm too indoctrinated. I'm going to use everything I can, and I think if I used an advertisement in that…

— Lynne Tillman

You have to create the space for the possibility of people speaking as they do. If writing is supposed to lead us…

— Lynne Tillman

Nothing is a matter of age. It's really in the person because you can publish book after book after book and still…

— Lynne Tillman

A friend of mine, a poet, Rebecca Wolff recently said to me, "You know, your stories are really voice-driven," and I guess…

— Lynne Tillman

I don't believe a picture is worth a thousand words, unless they're very confusing words.

— Lynne Tillman

Writers don't want to appear to be stupid. I don't know - maybe people become writers so that they can prove that…

— Lynne Tillman

I still do believe that form and content are very much related. I think throwing away some of the rule books on…

— Lynne Tillman

I think the major device for me is that narrator's voice. I'm always trying to find a different kind of form to…

— Lynne Tillman