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A novel is not a summary of its plot but a collection of instances, of luminous specific details that take us in the direction of the unsaid and unseen.

Charles Baxter

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Charles Baxter
Novel
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More quotes by Charles Baxter

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Literature is not an instruction manual.
Charles Baxter
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There is such a thing as the poetry of a mistake, and when you say, Mistakes were made, you deprive an action of its poetry, and you sound like a weasel.
Charles Baxter
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What's agitating about solitude is the inner voice telling you that you should be mated to somebody, that solitude is a mistake. The inner voice doesn't care about who you find. It just keeps pestering you, tormenting you.
Charles Baxter
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When I'm writing, I'm waiting to see somebody, and I'm waiting to hear them. It's almost like conjuring spirits out of the air, using your own imaginative instability.
Charles Baxter
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Say what you want about it, Hell is story-friendly... The mechanisms of hell are nicely attuned to the mechanisms of narrative. Not so the pleasures of Paradise. Paradise is not a story. It's about what happens when the stories are over.
Charles Baxter
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What a midwesterner he was, a thoroughly unhip guy with his heart in the usual place, on the sleeve, in plain sight.
Charles Baxter
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[T]he astonishing purity of pain, how it will not be mixed with any other sensation.
Charles Baxter
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Forget art. Put your trust in ice cream.
Charles Baxter
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Everybody should customize their names.
Charles Baxter
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Savor the imminent weirdness of the day.
Charles Baxter
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It's my feeling that any writer can get an emotion into a story without being sentimental as long as the emotion is dealt with honestly, with sufficient clarity, and detail.
Charles Baxter
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When all the details fit in perfectly, something is probably wrong with the story.
Charles Baxter
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If you want to see the consequences of ideas, write a story. If you want to see the consequences of belief, write a story in which somebody is acting on the ideas or beliefs that she has.
Charles Baxter
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Gainfully unemployed, very proud of it, too.
Charles Baxter
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My God, the corruptions of literature. It put all these notions into our heads.
Charles Baxter
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As the poet says, all happy couples are alike, it's the unhappy ones who create the stories. I'm no longer a story. Happiness has made me fade into real life.
Charles Baxter
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When you’re in love you don’t have to do a damn thing. You can just be. You can just stay quiet in the world. You don’t have to move an inch.
Charles Baxter
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The worst mistakes I've made have been the ones directed by sweet-natured hopefulness.
Charles Baxter
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When blame has been assigned, the story is over.
Charles Baxter
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I prefer short stories, but publishers would, of course, rather that writers produce novels, since novels are still more commercially viable.
Charles Baxter