Peter Orner

“The lake is always east. East is always the lake. Anywhere else he's ever been he never knows where he is.”

— Peter Orner

“For we are like olives: only when we are crushed do we yield what is best in us.”

— Peter Orner

Rarely is the pain of losing someone expressed with such directness, energy, and, yes, humor. The grief in Evan Kuhlman'sWolf Boyis palpable,…

— Peter Orner

I think some writers should wait for something to say.

— Peter Orner

I've spent so many years living in one place and imaging another.

— Peter Orner

I'm pretty tight - I rewrite, in some cases, 70 to 80 times before I show it to people.

— Peter Orner

I feel like there are too many words in the world, and I think silence is so much more powerful than the…

— Peter Orner

I usually have a location and then I put the character there. I love place names. I think I'm tricking myself by…

— Peter Orner

People have to follow their own strangeness. The minute they start making their own vision of the world flattened out so everyone…

— Peter Orner

I revise and revise and revise. I'm not even sure "revise" is the right word. I work a story almost to death…

— Peter Orner

“Considering the multitude of things that happen in any one person’s life, it seems fairly unlikely that those little boys remembered the…

— Peter Orner

“Chicago does not go to the world, the world comes to Chicago! Who needs New York? Who has taller buildings than our…

— Peter Orner

We don't want emotion handed to us - that's not emotion. You have to build and come from the reader's soul.

— Peter Orner

I think anything we do - eating, walking down the street, online shopping - gives you another perspective on writing stories.

— Peter Orner

“Leo wondered what unknown sin they must have committed in some previous life to deserve this. The answer came the same way…

— Peter Orner

I write when I have something to say and not when I don't. My time is better spent if I know I…

— Peter Orner

A novel is like a long relationship and a short story is a brief one that lingers - it lingers powerfully and…

— Peter Orner

I try not to read my own books just because I would rather read somebody else.

— Peter Orner

“Is this, Miriam wonders, what they call the march of history? And even if she doesn't fully understand, it doesn't mean she…

— Peter Orner

John Colman Wood's The Names of Things is a thoughtful, patient, and ultimately rewarding book. It's about, among many other things, the…

— Peter Orner

Everybody, doesn't matter who you are, escapes time. And for me, nothing is stranger than the thought that kids are just kids.…

— Peter Orner

If a novel or a story works, you don't stop thinking about it; it doesn't truly end.

— Peter Orner

I used to be surprised and a little annoyed when characters would reappear in my mind, itching to be in another story.…

— Peter Orner

There's a great Anton Chekhov quote. He says, "The Russian loves recalling life, but he does not love living." That scene has…

— Peter Orner

Lot of stories in deceit, how characters deceive other people, but most of all, I think, how they deceive themselves. We're not…

— Peter Orner