Peter Orner Quotes

Quotes about:

• But this is exactly why I read--and don't belong to a book group--because reading is the most individual thing there is. Why collectivize it? Didn't we have enough bad English teachers in school? Crowd sourcing and literature shouldn't mix.

  Peter Orner

  Teacher, Book, Reading

  45 Copy quote

• Actually, you’re not famous at all. Maybe you’ll get some traction after you’re dead?

  Peter Orner

  Traction

  11 Copy quote

• Like no other writer in contemporary American literature, Brock Clarke has a way of looking at us, I mean looking straight at us--warts, lots of warts, and beauty and hypocrisy and love, too, the gamut. And hes done it again in this brilliant The Happiest People in the World, a novel that is as hilarious and thought-provoking as it is ultimately, deadly, deadly serious. I for one am grateful hes out there--watching our every move.

  Peter Orner

  Moving, Grateful, Mean

  4 Copy quote

• I agree with the Lev Tolstoy quote completely, but I also feel like there's more to it. What is a happy family and an unhappy family? We're probably both of those things at the same time.

  Peter Orner

  Unhappy, Happy Family, Agree

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• A stellar, fully-realized collection of stories... grounded, wonderfully, in the river valleys of western Maine. You come away not only understanding a place but the soul of its people.

  Peter Orner

  Rivers, People, Soul

  4 Copy quote

• Alexis Coe rescues a buried but extraordinarily telling episode from the 1890s that resonates in all sorts of ways with today. That in itself would be an accomplishment. But this is a book that is truly riveting, a narrative that gallops. Lizzy Borden eat your heart out. Here’s a real crime of passion. Or was it? I dare you to pick this one up and try, just try to put it down.

  Peter Orner

  Real, Book, Passion

  4 Copy quote

• Rarely is the pain of losing someone expressed with such directness, energy, and, yes, humor. The grief in Evan Kuhlman'sWolf Boyis palpable, and so is the flawed, honest humanity of his characters. Here is real loss and somehow, real catharsis.

  Peter Orner

  Pain, Real, Grief

  4 Copy quote

• To me, and I'm sure for other writers, too, characters come back and they relive again, but what about those characters who only live for a page or two? Or for five pages or 10 pages. I like to think they're still out there - still living - but for me they kind of die, too. It's kind of sad. I don't think about them anymore unless I give them life again.

  Peter Orner

  Character, Thinking, Giving

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• John Colman Wood's The Names of Things is a thoughtful, patient, and ultimately rewarding book. It's about, among many other things, the connections human beings make, that in spite of everything, we will always make. To quote from the book, 'What he saw in the people was what the old anthropologists called communitas. It wasn't that the people sang and moved. It was their singing and moving together' Singing and moving together, Wood has found a way to express this profound and beautiful idea through fiction.

  Peter Orner

  Beautiful, Moving, Book

  4 Copy quote

• There's a great Anton Chekhov quote. He says, "The Russian loves recalling life, but he does not love living." That scene has always been something that I have held dear. When something happens, the first thing you want to do is tell it. That's almost more exciting. It's almost simultaneous with the experience; you are already telling something incredible while it's happening. The stories that everybody carries around and repeats, I am really interested in that.

  Peter Orner

  Incredibles, Scene, Exciting

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• I've spent a lot of time in prisons, first doing legal work and later, teaching.

  Peter Orner

  Teaching, Firsts, Prison

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

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

  Peter Orner

  Thinking, Stories, Ends

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• I have a friend who teaches yoga (or is it pilates?), and she said that I don't seem to live in the moment. And I said, "Exactly!" I'd go nuts if I lived in the moment.

  Peter Orner

  Yoga, Nuts, Live In The Moment

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• I revise and revise and revise. I'm not even sure "revise" is the right word. I work a story almost to death before it's done.

  Peter Orner

  Stories, Done, Right Words

  Source: therumpus.net

  6 Copy quote

• A collection, for me, is a book of very diverse stories that somehow speak to each other, across wide geography, across time, years, decades.

  Peter Orner

  Book, Years, Stories

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• I think what I'm after, a lot of the time, is just honesty. What accounts for the fact that the stories we tell ourselves - the story we carry around and think of most often - are the dark ones? Maybe we have to wander around in the darkness to understand it?

  Peter Orner

  Honesty, Dark, Thinking

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• Everybody, doesn't matter who you are, escapes time. And for me, nothing is stranger than the thought that kids are just kids. Nobody is just anything. Whether you are eight or eighty, you've got your own unique take on how weird this world is.

  Peter Orner

  Kids, Unique, Eight

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• I used to be surprised and a little annoyed when characters would reappear in my mind, itching to be in another story. Now I realize it's part of the deal, that you create these people out of thin air but then, if you do it right, they actually live.

  Peter Orner

  Character, Air, People

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• I agonize over things like this - the order of things, section titles, all this architectural sort of stuff. Takes me years to figure out.

  Peter Orner

  Order, Years, Titles

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• My characters tend to be people who are looking back on a life lived, their joys, their regrets.

  Peter Orner

  Regret, Character, People

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• I write when I have something to say and not when I don't. My time is better spent if I know I have nothing to say. I don't consider it writer's block; I just don't have anything to say.

  Peter Orner

  Block, Writing

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• What you can do with a short story that you can't do with a novel is punch someone in the gut, in the best of ways.

  Peter Orner

  Novel, Short Story, Guts

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• A novel is like a long relationship and a short story is a brief one that lingers - it lingers powerfully and maybe more powerfully. I think that's true in a lot of cases, most long-term relationships compared to some of the briefer ones - the intensity of those brief ones that end, I think a short story is kind of like that. There's a certain level of intensity that I think is different.

  Peter Orner

  Thinking, Long, Different

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• I write by hand in my notebooks and number the drafts, so I know how crazy I can get with this. Some writers, like my teacher Marilynne Robinson, she only writes one draft. I've thought about this a lot; I think it's because she writes it 80 times in her head before it comes out.

  Peter Orner

  Notebook, Teacher, Crazy

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• I'm constantly trying to figure out how to crack that mystery; how to make a novel that has a sense of immediacy of a short story. I try to do that and I'll try it again, but I'll never get it.

  Peter Orner

  Trying, Mystery, Novel

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

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