Quote

Knockemstiff is a collection of short stories set in the holler of the same name in southern Ohio where I grew up. I tried to link the stories together through the place and some recurring characters.

Donald Ray Pollock

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Donald Ray Pollock
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: December 23
Novelist
Writer
Knockemstiff
Ohio
Grew
Link
Name
Collection
Names
Links
Place
Collections
Stories
Southern
Character
Tried
Holler
Together
Characters
Recurring
Short
Ohio

More quotes by Donald Ray Pollock

Image
Look, girls don't care how many push-ups you can do. They just want to get high and wear flowers in their hair. Maybe steal a car.
Donald Ray Pollock
Image
I was always a big reader, even when everything was bad and miserable.
Donald Ray Pollock
Image
I don't think my book is any more shocking than if I went out right now and brought back your local newspaper and found a story that happened around here yesterday or the day before that's just as shocking as anything in my book.
Donald Ray Pollock
Image
I've never heard of that anthology [Vance Randolph, Pissing in the Snow], but you can be sure I'll buy it now.
Donald Ray Pollock
Image
I'm not sure what the proper label might be, or the most accurate one, but someone once called my stuff Southern Ohio Gothic and I thought that was fair.
Donald Ray Pollock
Image
I worked in a paper mill all my adult life and there were a lot of funny guys there. So you pick up on that. Even though something really bad might have happened to somebody you can still make a joke out of it.
Donald Ray Pollock
Image
I guess music is the one universal art form that most people can be moved by, regardless of where they come from, and for many it might be the closest they get to god, but I think taking a trip out into the country, away from the light pollution, and looking at a clear night sky is what does it best for me.
Donald Ray Pollock
Image
I think some people at Doubleday worried about that a bit when Knockemstiff came out, but, with the exception of one or two people who complained that I didn't do justice to the many good people who lived in the holler, most of the local objections have been aimed at the violence and foul language.
Donald Ray Pollock
Image
I'm always doubting my work, even when people are kind enough to say good things. I still have a hard time believing I've written some books, let alone that they've actually done pretty well.
Donald Ray Pollock
Image
I look upon [writing about religion] as a nice way to get by in this precarious world, though I've never been able to do it myself.
Donald Ray Pollock
Image
Though there are still many good people out there in the world, it seems that they're vastly outnumbered by the stupid, selfish, violent ones.
Donald Ray Pollock
Image
Religion can be a good thing, but basically the way I look at it is that it provides a moral code, common sense. But then people distort it and use it as an excuse to be a bully. It's sad, but that's the way it's worked for a several thousand years now.
Donald Ray Pollock
Image
One of the reasons I write about religion is due to my own envy of people who truly feel the presence of god in their lives, good souls who believe devoutly in a supreme being and an afterlife.
Donald Ray Pollock
Image
I don't think writing fiction has changed my worldview.
Donald Ray Pollock
Image
Unless he had whiskey running through his veins, Willard came to the clearing every morning and evening to talk to God. Arvin didn't know which was worse, the drinking or the praying. As far back as he could remember, it seemed that his father had fought the Devil all the time.
Donald Ray Pollock
Image
I'm not sure I would have ever decided to try to write when I was forty-five if I hadn't already gotten that degree [in English].
Donald Ray Pollock
Image
When I first started out, I was trying to write stories about nurses and lawyers and a lot of people I didn't know anything about, and they just weren't working.
Donald Ray Pollock
Image
You're always hoping you can attract a bigger audience, but at the same time, I'd hate to give up what I write. If I could write Chick Lit or something like that and make money off it, that'd be great. But I just can't do it.
Donald Ray Pollock
Image
I remember a class I taught at Ohio State where I assigned a Mary Gaitskill story, which really wasn't that bad, and I had this one girl refuse to read it. But better that reaction than no reaction at all.
Donald Ray Pollock
Image
I've always liked reading books that contain funny lines or situations, and maybe because my work is known chiefly for its violence and misery, I made a more conscious attempt with The Heavenly Table to do that myself.
Donald Ray Pollock