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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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Walter Kirn
Age: 62
Born: 1962
Born: August 3
Novelist
Writer
Akron
Ohio
Ends
Souls
Flowed
Soul
Reflection
Reside
Like
Products
Blade
Activity
Blades
Fans
Spinning
Movement
Outward
Within
Movements
Spirit
Product

More quotes by Walter Kirn

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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
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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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To apologize for your personal absolutes, for what Sandy Pinter calls your “Core Attachments,” means apologizing for your very existence.
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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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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The most beautiful faces have some ugly in them.
Walter Kirn
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Sometimes, when a person is truly lost in this world, suffocating inside her private bubble where all she can hear is her own droning heartbeat, a touch can be enough.
Walter Kirn
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A writer turns his life into material, and if you’re in his life, he uses yours, too.
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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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
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Art, art of any kind, shows that folks are trying.
Walter Kirn
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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
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In the age of networked everything, life moves sideways and covers lots of ground while barely touching the earth.
Walter Kirn
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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
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Everyone loves a witch hunt as long as it's someone else's witch being hunted.
Walter Kirn
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Just breathing can be such a luxury sometimes.
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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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
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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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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