Top Lorin Stein Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Lorin Stein Biography

Lorin Hollister Stein (born April 22, 1973) is an American critic, editor, and translator. He was the editor in chief of The Paris Review but resigned in 2017 amid accusations of sexually inappropriate behavior. Under Stein's editorship, The Paris Review won two National Magazine Awards—the first in the category of Essays and Criticism (2011), and the second for General Excellence (2013).

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Lorin Stein Quotes

I hadn't thought about the balance in mood. You see that we did it in alphabetical order, so if there's any kind of shape, or any kind of flow, it's random. Gender. . . we didn't think much about it. It was sort of interesting to see that women often were choosing women and men often were choosing men. And sometimes they wouldn't and that was fun. I didn't know that I would be excited by that, until I saw it happen.

Fun, Interesting, Men, Thinking, Women

I don't think much about the issues after they come out. I like it when people like them. Often, when people have criticisms, I find myself agreeing with them. I think some issues are stronger than others. I hope we're getting a little bit better, overall, issue by issue.

Come, Criticisms, Issues, Overall, People, Thinking

I like fiction that deals with matters that are of burning importance to us in our private lives. And not all short stories are like that. In general, short stories - and maybe this is a little bit off-topic - but I think short stories have this bad association with, like, waiting rooms.

Bad Ass, General, Like, Short, Thinking, Waiting Rooms

You can go back and try to generalize, but then you end up saying things that all editors say about everything that ever gets published. Something about voice, about urgency, about actually having a story to tell.

Editors, Voice, Trying, Everything, Saying

I tend to think that the onus is on the writer to engage the reader, that the reader should not be expected to need the writer, that the writer has to prove it. All that stuff might add up to a kind of fun in the work. I like things that are about interesting subjects, which sounds self-evident.

Fun, Interesting, Self, Thinking, Work

Names don't matter, CVs don't matter, previous publications don't matter at all, because, in a certain way, the ideal is for someone to come completely out of left field. And still, of course, it is hard to say no to a writer who matters a lot to you and who you know matters to your readers.

Certain, Field, Hard, Matter, Names, Who You Know

I have the feeling that the magazine can reach many more people than it reaches and has something to offer that not everyone knows who should know it. That's why we're starting an app, and that's why we do the blog. But editorially, I think it's mainly a matter of keeping your eyes peeled. You just really don't know what's going to come along.

Everyone, Eye, Know, People, Reach, Thinking

I regret that there aren't more short stories in other magazines. But in a certain way, I think the disappearance of the short-story template from everyone's head can be freeing. Partly because there's no mass market for stories, the form is up for grabs. It can be many, many things. So the anthology is very much intended for students, but I think we're all in the position of writing students now. Very few people are going around with a day-to-day engagement with the short story.

Disappearance, Mass, Regret, Students, Thinking, Writing

Chekhov's stories are about the moment that a life goes off the rails and the price that will be paid - forever. That's a typical Chekhov story for you. Something that you're used to lying in bed worrying about at four in the morning, before you have the psychic defenses to kid yourself and tell yourself to get up and shower and go to the office.

Kids, Life, Lying, Morning, Tell

If I could change the attitude of young men toward literature, I would want them to read not just for escape, but because literature can be more truthful about things like sex, commitment, and aging. It can be more truthful about the stuff that our parents lied to us (and themselves) about, and the stuff that everyone has to lie about. It can all be dealt with truthfully in fiction and poetry.

Attitude, Change, Lying, Parents, Sex, Things

I don't know what people should be reading. Only you know what you should be reading.

Reading, People, Should, Know

For me the question that you have to ask, about any magazine, is whether it's needed, whether it's publishing things that no one else could publish, or publish equally well. So there's that.

Magazine, Magazines, Needed, Question, Things, Wells

There are two basic defenses for an open ending: one is, If you read carefully enough, you'll know what happened. And the other is, That's how life is: things don't come to neat endings, there isn't a "happily ever after. " But if you take that second line of defense, then I think you have to make the point that the writer has shown the range of possibility.

Carefully, Defense, Possibility, Thinking, Two

I’m a reader who uses fiction as a way of worrying about life.

Worry, Fiction, Use, Reader, Life

A lot of people who want to see the short story have a renaissance of readership - they tend to think of short stories, and sometimes poems too, as being well-suited to the way we now live, with all of these broken-up bits of time. I hope they're right, but my sense is that our fiction reading has become, if anything, more cherished as a kind of escape from fragmentation.

Reading, Thinking, People, Fragmentation, Stories

So, short stories have an even harder time, because they tend to get read during the day, between other things. They're interstitial. And yet the content of short stories tends to be very much "nighttime" content.

Stories, Short Story, Nighttime, Time, Content

In general, short stories are less read than before, they're less published than before and, not surprisingly, they're less taught than before.

General, Published, Short Story, Stories, Taught

It used to be that you would go into a writing program and what you would learn was how to write a short story. You would pick up the magazines and you would be taught from the magazines how to write a short story. Nowadays student writers are learning to write novels because that market is gone, so the ones who are drawn to the form are doing it really for reasons of their own and that's really exciting.

Writing, Students, Reason, Learn, Writers, Magazines

We've never had a giant circulation. And we've always been a magazine for writers and for sophisticated readers. We've never had to run stories that would appeal to a million people. And what you end up with is a kind of tradition that might have staying power - the cockroach after armageddon.

Appeal, Cockroach, Cockroaches, Million, People, Running