Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Charles Baxter
Somebody
Hear
Almost
Conjuring
Waiting
Instability
Spirit
Imaginative
Writing
Spirits
Like
Using
Air

More quotes by Charles Baxter

Image
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
Image
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
Image
Needing something is not the same thing as being interested in the thing itself.
Charles Baxter
Image
The worst mistakes I've made have been the ones directed by sweet-natured hopefulness.
Charles Baxter
Image
When all the details fit in perfectly, something is probably wrong with the story.
Charles Baxter
Image
Everybody should customize their names.
Charles Baxter
Image
At least with pets, and for all I know, people too, intelligence and quick-wittedness have nothing to do with a talent for being loved, or being kind, nothing at all, less than nothing.
Charles Baxter
Image
My God, the corruptions of literature. It put all these notions into our heads.
Charles Baxter
Image
There is no weather in malls.
Charles Baxter
Image
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
Image
Literature is not a sack race. There aren't real winners and losers in the Republic of Letters.
Charles Baxter
Image
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
Image
[T]he astonishing purity of pain, how it will not be mixed with any other sensation.
Charles Baxter
Image
Gainfully unemployed, very proud of it, too.
Charles Baxter
Image
Literature is not an instruction manual.
Charles Baxter
Image
When blame has been assigned, the story is over.
Charles Baxter
Image
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
Image
Savor the imminent weirdness of the day.
Charles Baxter
Image
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
Image
I prefer short stories, but publishers would, of course, rather that writers produce novels, since novels are still more commercially viable.
Charles Baxter