Andre Jules Dubus II (August 11, 1936 – February 24, 1999) was an American short story writer, essayist, and autobiographer.
I have always known that writing fiction had little effect on the world; that if it did, young men would not have gone to war after The Iliad.
I truly believe the art's larger than the artist. Who cares about John Steinbeck? I care about the Joad family.
My mother was making $135 a week, but she had resilience and imagination. She might take frozen vegetables, cook them with garlic, onion and Spam, and it would taste like a four-star dinner.
I love short stories because I believe they are the way we live. They are what our friends tell us, in their pain and joy, their passion and rage, their yearning and their cry against injustice.
I've learned over the years that the writing is smarter and far larger than the writer and his or her own desires for it.
What is art if not a concentrated and impassioned effort to make something with the little we have, the little we see?
I love short stories because I believe they are the way we live.
If you don't put 99 percent of yourself into the writing, there will be no publishing career. There's the writer and there's the author. The author - you don't ever think about the author. Just think about the writer. So my advice would be, find a way to not care - easier said than done.
I got a degree in sociology, didn't read much fiction in college, and I was a pretty political, left-wing type of guy. I wanted to do some kind of work in social change and make things better for the poor man, and I was very romantic and passionate about it.
Teaching well draws from the same well that writing draws from: the reserves of compassion and ability to listen and concentrate on another. So I have to have fine line between teaching and writing. I try not to ever think of career. I just try to go to the dream world every day.
My dad and mom divorced when I was around ten, and I didn't live with him after that, though he was close by and we saw each other weekly. I wasn't really aware that he was a writer; I didn't start reading his writing until I was about fifteen. It occurred to me then that my dad was kind of special; he's still one of my favorite writers.