"Of course there is nothing that cannot be done incorrectly."
"What a story is, is devious. It pretends transparency, forthrightness. It engages with ordinary people, ordinary matters, recognizable stuff. But this is all a masquerade. What good stories deal with is the horror and incomprehensibility of time, the dark encroachment of old catastrophes..."
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Source: Joy Williams, The Art of Fiction No. 223. Interview with Paul Winner, www.theparisreview.org. 2014.
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"Someone once told me a story about long term relationships. To think of them as a continent to explore. I could spend a lifetime backpacking through Africa, and I would still never know all there is to know about that continent. To stay the course, to stay intentional, to stay curious and connected - that's the heart of it. But it's so easy to lose track of the trail, to get tired, to want to give up, or to want a new adventure. It can be so easy to lose sight of the goodness and mystery within the person sitting right in front of you."
"A writer loves the dark, loves it, but is always fumbling around in the light."
"You must stop worrying about why things happen and wonder what they mean when they do."
"The story knows itself better than the writer does at some point, knows what's being said before the writer figures out how to say it."
"Nothing we do is inevitable, but everything we do is irreversible."