Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Walter Kirn
Age: 62
Born: 1962
Born: August 3
Novelist
Writer
Akron
Ohio
View
Mythology
Views
Obsession
Either
Realistic
Right
Anti
Writing
Obsessed
Writers
West
Observant
Tired
Phony

More quotes by Walter Kirn

Image
Given Loughner's obsession with meaninglessness and language, maybe Foucault & Derrida deserve some fault here, too.
Walter Kirn
Image
Everyone loves a witch hunt as long as it's someone else's witch being hunted.
Walter Kirn
Image
I feel like my head is finally the right size. I feel like it finally fits around my mind.
Walter Kirn
Image
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
Image
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
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
In the age of networked everything, life moves sideways and covers lots of ground while barely touching the earth.
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
A writer turns his life into material, and if you’re in his life, he uses yours, too.
Walter Kirn
Image
The best critic needn't be right, just interesting.
Walter Kirn
Image
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
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
Other people's devotions embarrassed me, perhaps because, like other people's kisses, they rarely looked genuine when viewed too closely.
Walter Kirn
Image
Quiet cunning bested boastful brawn
Walter Kirn
Image
What was more humiliating, I wondered: having to beg for someone's cold chicken bones or being offered them?
Walter Kirn
Image
Love is a powerful painkiller.
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
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 most beautiful faces have some ugly in them.
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