Alice McDermott Quotes
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I am trying to cultivate the notion that constantly misplacing one's cell phone is a charming eccentricity... my children aren't buying it.
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I'm a novelist. I'm not a crusader, and I'm not an editorial writer. And I'm not writing fiction to convince anybody of anything.
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Memory is not pure. Memories told are not pure memories; memories told are stories. The storyteller will change them. I've always been interested in that.
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Some readers sort of suspect that you have another book that you didn't publish that has even more information in it. I think that readers sort of want to be taught something. They have this idea that there's a takeaway from a novel rather than just the being there, which I think is the great, great pleasure of reading.
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I love a well-plotted story. But I'm just not that kind of writer, and it's not necessarily by choice. When I manipulate plot, I feel I lose authenticity.
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All my friends had grandparents who had accents. I thought all grandparents were supposed to have accents. My friends were all second-generation, as I was.
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Being Irish-American myself, Irish-American material is readily at hand to me.
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I've got to hear the rhythm of the sentences; I want the music of the prose. I want to see ordinary things transformed not by the circumstances in which I see them but by the language with which they're described. That's what I love when I read.
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It worries me that undergrads and high school students are forced into books they aren't ready for, like Faulkner's, and then they are afraid of putting their toes in the water again.
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I guess I cringe when the discussion leads to, rather than books and sentences and characters and the stuff that writers are supposed to be concerned with, how to have an online presence and how many followers you have on Twitter. That stuff always makes me uncomfortable.
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In grammar school I read 'Act One' by Moss Hart, and being a playwright struck me as the most magical and romantic career anyone could have... But I never did write a play.
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I think 'Charming Billy' ultimately is a novel about faith and what we believe in and, above all, what we choose to believe in.
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I'm always telling my students, don't - don't worry so much third person, first person. It doesn't make that much difference.
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My own 'sentimental favorite' is always the novel I haven't yet written - I suppose that's the one I consider my 'masterpiece' as well.
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At the beginning of every semester, I ask my graduate students whether there is something I should read that will help me understand their work.
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A perfect poem you can't pin down and say, 'This is exactly what it meant to me.' It's not a self-help manual.
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I have a great fondness for the liars in my stories.