Along Quote by Joanna Scott

How wonderful it would be to scatter words as they rise to consciousness, to let them lie where they fall.

— Joanna Scott

Writing that flirts with incoherence can just as readily flounder as writing characterized by simplicity and composure. There is no reliable formula for originality,…

— Joanna Scott

I don't think Donald Barthelme would have minded being called a confusing writer. Confusion was a favorite subject for him in his essays and…

— Joanna Scott

Vladimir Nabokov on 'Bleak House' or Henry James on 'The House of the Seven Gables' prove that reading can be an exciting subject in…

— Joanna Scott

With prurient absorption and only minimal risk, we can pretend to be the subject of the lead article on the front page of the…

— Joanna Scott

The novelist in me is probably hiding behind all the stories I write, looking for ways to connect them and continue the conversation with…

— Joanna Scott

Whether art is defined as a representation of or response to reality, it demands an intense engagement with things we haven't managed to understand…

— Joanna Scott

The best liars lie with their eyes rather than with their words. This might put writers at a disadvantage.

— Joanna Scott

In the early 1980s, I spent a year working as an assistant at the Elaine Markson Literary Agency.

— Joanna Scott

Reviewers try to square the antics of a writer's life with the antics in the fiction. Even satirical verbal play is too often read…

— Joanna Scott

When we really start searching for the truth in stories, we can find it everywhere, not just in sincere confessions but in the deliberate…

— Joanna Scott

There are plenty of writers, past and present, from Shakespeare to Henry James to Lydia Davis, who test the limits of coherence and put…

— Joanna Scott