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Art, art of any kind, shows that folks are trying.

Walter Kirn

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Walter Kirn
Age: 62
Born: 1962
Born: August 3
Novelist
Writer
Akron
Ohio
Kind
Folks
Art
Shows
Trying

More quotes by Walter Kirn

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Requesting permission from someone to be honest is really a way of accusing the other person of being so demanding or overbearing that you couldn't be honest all along.
Walter Kirn
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A writer has a use for his experiences that most civilians simply don't he or she discerns material in situations that others simply live through. Perhaps there are some who disapprove of this, but without this double consciousness, literature would not get made at all.
Walter Kirn
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Most writers' view of the New West is either phony - obsessed with the same tired mythology - or it's obsessed with anti-mythology, ... There's not a lot of realistic, observant writing about the West right now.
Walter Kirn
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I've been told my old city possesses a 'thriving arts scene,' whatever that is personally, I think artists should lie low and stick to their work, not line-dance through the parks.
Walter Kirn
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Memo to extreme partisans: If you can't bring yourselves to love your enemies, can you at least learn to hate your friends?
Walter Kirn
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A writer is someone who tells you one thing so someday he can tell his readers another thing: what he was thinking but declined to say, or what he would have thought had he been wiser. A writer turns his life into material, and if you're in his life, he uses yours, too.
Walter Kirn
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He knows, as all the cleverest ones do, that no human being is so interesting that he can't make himself more interesting still by acting retarded at random intervals.
Walter Kirn
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Short stories are fiction's R & D department, and failed or less-than-conclusive experiments are not just to be expected but to be hoped for.
Walter Kirn
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Love is a powerful painkiller.
Walter Kirn
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Spirit was a by-product of activity, like the reflection from a spinning fan blade, and our souls in the end did not reside within us but flowed outward from our movements.
Walter Kirn
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The most beautiful faces have some ugly in them.
Walter Kirn
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Given Loughner's obsession with meaninglessness and language, maybe Foucault & Derrida deserve some fault here, too.
Walter Kirn
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At the beginning of a novel, a writer needs confidence, but after that what's required is persistence. These traits sound similar. They aren't. Confidence is what politicians, seducers and currency speculators have, but persistence is a quality found in termites. It's the blind drive to keep on working that persists after confidence breaks down.
Walter Kirn
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Just breathing can be such a luxury sometimes.
Walter Kirn
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I still believe in love. I always will. It's my blessing and my burden.
Walter Kirn
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Reason leavened with a little wit (if possible) is the real alternative to hate speech, meaning that there's no better time for it.
Walter Kirn
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Other people's devotions embarrassed me, perhaps because, like other people's kisses, they rarely looked genuine when viewed too closely.
Walter Kirn
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What was more humiliating, I wondered: having to beg for someone's cold chicken bones or being offered them?
Walter Kirn
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It looked like just the sort of family Americans dream of having: dumb and loving.
Walter Kirn
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Quiet cunning bested boastful brawn
Walter Kirn