Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Walter Kirn
Age: 62
Born: 1962
Born: August 3
Novelist
Writer
Akron
Ohio
Experiments
Department
Expected
Short
Fiction
Conclusive
Less
Hoped
Stories
Insightful
Failed

More quotes by Walter Kirn

Image
I love reference books, especially collections of memorable quotations, almanacs, and atlases. Facts to me are like candy or popcorn - small, tasty delights - and I like to gorge on them now and then.
Walter Kirn
Image
The lines we draw that make us who we are are potent by virtue of being non-negotiable, and even, at some level, indefensible.
Walter Kirn
Image
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
Image
In the age of networked everything, life moves sideways and covers lots of ground while barely touching the earth.
Walter Kirn
Image
realized that at a level I'd never been conscious we'd been engaged in a game of wits for years. I suppose most writer-subject pairings are like that. Of course, I'd set aside my plan to write about him [Clark Rockfeller] as soon as I'd gotten to know him some, but now I'd resumed that intention.
Walter Kirn
Image
Some strangers become more important to you than family, maybe because you're not expected to love them. You can leave them whenever you want to. They can, too. Every moment together is a choice.
Walter Kirn
Image
A writer turns his life into material, and if you’re in his life, he uses yours, too.
Walter Kirn
Image
Just breathing can be such a luxury sometimes.
Walter Kirn
Image
Other people's devotions embarrassed me, perhaps because, like other people's kisses, they rarely looked genuine when viewed too closely.
Walter Kirn
Image
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
Image
When Loughner himself speaks and we find out his real influences are Spiderman, 'Gnome Chomsky,' Taylor Swift, and Dr. Bronner, then what?
Walter Kirn
Image
The most beautiful faces have some ugly in them.
Walter Kirn
Image
The best anti-depressant pill for me would be one the size of a house so you could drop it on me and put me out of my misery.
Walter Kirn
Image
Art, art of any kind, shows that folks are trying.
Walter Kirn
Image
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
Image
It looked like just the sort of family Americans dream of having: dumb and loving.
Walter Kirn
Image
To apologize for your personal absolutes, for what Sandy Pinter calls your “Core Attachments,” means apologizing for your very existence.
Walter Kirn
Image
Quiet cunning bested boastful brawn
Walter Kirn
Image
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
Image
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