From about the age of 15 or 16 I’d had the notion that I wanted to write fiction, and I’d done enough in college to satisfy myself that I had a knack for it – I wouldn’t call it “talent” – though I wondered if I’d ever have the guts to actually commit to it. Help us to share this great article. Your friends will appreciate it! 0share Facebook0 Twitter0 Pinterest0 LinkedIn0 Flipboard Tumblr0 Mix
I really had to decide why I was writing. I had no interest in going back to law; I very briefly – for about six hours – considered going to get my MBA, but in the end, I realized that the only work I really wanted to do was write. Help us to share this great article. Your friends will appreciate it! 0share Facebook0 Twitter0 Pinterest0 LinkedIn0 Flipboard Tumblr0 Mix
I started publishing stories in small magazines early on, but after seven or eight or nine years you feel like you need a little more than that to show for your efforts. Help us to share this great article. Your friends will appreciate it! 0share Facebook0 Twitter0 Pinterest0 LinkedIn0 Flipboard Tumblr0 Mix
I thought when I started writing that I’d have a book out in four or five years, and as it became apparent that that wasn’t going to happen, I became increasingly frustrated and unsure of myself. Help us to share this great article. Your friends will appreciate it! 0share Facebook0 Twitter0 Pinterest0 LinkedIn0 Flipboard Tumblr0 Mix
I quit law in 1988 to start writing, and it took me 17 years from that point to get a book contract. I guess you can say I was on the slow train. Help us to share this great article. Your friends will appreciate it! 0share Facebook0 Twitter0 Pinterest0 LinkedIn0 Flipboard Tumblr0 Mix
I realized I was never going to have any peace with myself unless I made an honest stab at trying to write. Help us to share this great article. Your friends will appreciate it! 0share Facebook0 Twitter0 Pinterest0 LinkedIn0 Flipboard Tumblr0 Mix
If a person wants to be of any use to himself, he better insist on getting his fair share of beauty and pleasure, and if there’s something about the system that’s keeping him from getting his share, then I think he’s well within his rights to fight to change that. Help us to share this great article. Your friends will appreciate it! 0share Facebook0 Twitter0 Pinterest0 LinkedIn0 Flipboard Tumblr0 Mix
A person deprived of beauty and pleasure puts me in mind of the Haitian notion of a zombie – a person disconnected from his or her soul, a person who works for others’ profit but never his own, a person who mindlessly does the bidding of the boss and exists in an emotional and mental limbo. Help us to share this great article. Your friends will appreciate it! 0share Facebook0 Twitter0 Pinterest0 LinkedIn0 Flipboard Tumblr0 Mix
You have the mainstream bourgeois life of the U.S., Europe, the “developed” world – the life of technology, education, mortgages, careers, a certain level of physical comfort – while on the other hand, several billion people on the planet exist on less than a dollar a day. That’s a huge and terrible reality to get your head around. Help us to share this great article. Your friends will appreciate it! 0share Facebook0 Twitter0 Pinterest0 LinkedIn0 Flipboard Tumblr0 Mix
Eruptions of talent continue to happen in Haiti, in spite of everything. Help us to share this great article. Your friends will appreciate it! 0share Facebook0 Twitter0 Pinterest0 LinkedIn0 Flipboard Tumblr0 Mix
The funny thing is, about the time I let go of any aspiration toward worldly success, that’s about the time I started writing decent work. Help us to share this great article. Your friends will appreciate it! 0share Facebook0 Twitter0 Pinterest0 LinkedIn0 Flipboard Tumblr0 Mix
The Kessler Theater is one such gem, an Art Deco beauty … for a slice of real life, there’s always the Kessler. Help us to share this great article. Your friends will appreciate it! 0share Facebook0 Twitter0 Pinterest0 LinkedIn0 Flipboard Tumblr0 Mix
I have a horror of being self-indulgent and wasting time, and there is that risk in doing this kind of work. Are you totally deluded in sitting down at a desk every day and trying to write something? Is it self-indulgent, or might it possibly lead to something worthwhile? At a certain point I decided to keep on because I felt like the work was getting better, and I was taking great pleasure in that. Help us to share this great article. Your friends will appreciate it! 0share Facebook0 Twitter0 Pinterest0 LinkedIn0 Flipboard Tumblr0 Mix
It took me 10 years to write a story that pleased me – that I could look at after it was published and not cringe. Help us to share this great article. Your friends will appreciate it! 0share Facebook0 Twitter0 Pinterest0 LinkedIn0 Flipboard Tumblr0 Mix
Maybe the light’s at the other end of the tunnel. Help us to share this great article. Your friends will appreciate it! 0share Facebook0 Twitter0 Pinterest0 LinkedIn0 Flipboard Tumblr0 Mix
Haiti is unique – the first successful slave revolt in history, the first black republic etc., and then when you get into the culture, the voodoo, and that wonderful synchretization of Christian and African belief and symbology, it’s like nothing the world has ever seen. Help us to share this great article. Your friends will appreciate it! 0share Facebook0 Twitter0 Pinterest0 LinkedIn0 Flipboard Tumblr0 Mix
You’d think family would be the one sure thing in life, the gimme? Points you got just for being born? So much thick, meaty stuff bound you to these people, so many interlocking spirals of history, genetics, common cause, and struggle that it should be the most basic of all drives, that you would strive to protect and love one another, yet this bond that should be the big no-brainer was in fact the hardest thing. Help us to share this great article. Your friends will appreciate it! 0share Facebook0 Twitter0 Pinterest0 LinkedIn0 Flipboard Tumblr0 Mix
There was no such thing as perfection in this world, only moments of such extreme transparency that you forgot yourself, a holy mercy if there ever was one. Help us to share this great article. Your friends will appreciate it! 0share Facebook0 Twitter0 Pinterest0 LinkedIn0 Flipboard Tumblr0 Mix
If you could figure out how to live with family then you’d gone a long way toward finding your peace. Help us to share this great article. Your friends will appreciate it! 0share Facebook0 Twitter0 Pinterest0 LinkedIn0 Flipboard Tumblr0 Mix
The strange, wonderful stories of Doctor Olaf van Schuler’s Brain introduce us to the tremendously gifted Kirsten Menger-Anderson, a writer whose subject is nothing less than the diagnosis and cure of the human malady. We follow twelve generations of New York City’s Steenwycks family through their forays into phrenology, mesmerism, radium therapy and similar misadventures, a historically rich narrative that Menger-Anderson delivers in striking, elegant prose and with a sure eye for detail. This is a remarkable debut by a writer to watch. Help us to share this great article. Your friends will appreciate it! 0share Facebook0 Twitter0 Pinterest0 LinkedIn0 Flipboard Tumblr0 Mix
