Peter Orner Quotes - Page 2

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• I think that maybe happy families don't need stories the way unhappy families need stories. Maybe they're too busy living that they don't actually step back and talk about life like the Anton Chekhov quote. I prefer Anton Chekhov to Lev Tolstoy, and the reason is because of what he leaves out. Sometimes I think Tolstoy had a theory that he was proving and he proved it. Chekhov is more ambiguous.

  Peter Orner

  Thinking, Unhappy, Sometimes

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• I sometimes wonder if our memories are a myth. We think we remember, but we are remembering the story and not the actual event?

  Peter Orner

  Memories, Thinking, Remember

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I beat a story to within an inch of its life - that's when I know its done. Not before, not after.

  Peter Orner

  Stories, Done, Beats

  Source: therumpus.net

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• One story I've been trying to write for years, and haven't been able to finish, is about a face I saw, just a glimpse of a face, in a max security prison in North Carolina. I'm still trying to understand what I saw in that guy's face.

  Peter Orner

  Writing, Years, Guy

  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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• I think some writers should wait for something to say.

  Peter Orner

  Thinking, Waiting

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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

  Peter Orner

  Writing, Thinking, Shopping

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I always say writing fiction isn't something you teach. It's something you do, and only experimentation - i.e. doing it, either badly or good sometimes - can help anybody get any better or worse at it.

  Peter Orner

  Writing, Fiction, Helping

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

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

  Peter Orner

  Years, Imaging

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Lot of stories in deceit, how characters deceive other people, but most of all, I think, how they deceive themselves. We're not as tricky as we think we are.

  Peter Orner

  Character, Thinking, People

  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

• 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

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• 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 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

• 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

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