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I think my characters - well, at least a few of them - are hoping or searching for some kind of contact with god.

Donald Ray Pollock

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Donald Ray Pollock
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: December 23
Novelist
Writer
Knockemstiff
Ohio
Kind
Searching
Think
Hoping
Thinking
Contact
Characters
Least
Character
Wells
Well

More quotes by Donald Ray Pollock

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When I turned fifty, I decided to quit the mill and go to graduate school.
Donald Ray Pollock
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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
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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
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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
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I sort of like writing about weird characters, I guess.
Donald Ray Pollock
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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
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I don't really think the outburst is recent there have always been writers in Appalachia.
Donald Ray Pollock
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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
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I'm beginning to believe that anything I do to extend my life is just going to be outweighed by the agony of living it.
Donald Ray Pollock
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I took a correspondence course with a guy at Ohio University. He gave me ten exercises, and one of them resulted in the story Bactine. It pleased me a lot more than anything else I'd ever done, so I kept messing around and by the time I got to Ohio State I'd written maybe eight stories.
Donald Ray Pollock
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A lot of people get the wrong impression, think there's something romantic or tragic about hitting bottom.
Donald Ray Pollock
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I spent thirty-two years in a paper mill in southern Ohio, and before that I worked in a meatpacking plant and a shoe factory.
Donald Ray Pollock
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I don't think writing fiction has changed my worldview.
Donald Ray Pollock
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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