We are artists, because God is.
But nothing is solid and permanent. Our lives are raised on the shakiest foundations. You don't need to read history books to know that. You only have to know the history of your own life.
I think I had a particular moment when I was 15 years old. I read 'Crime and Punishment,' and that book just, I think, more than any other book made me want to be a writer, 'cause it was the first time that I hadn't just entered a book, but a book had entered me.
I love learning about different dialects and I own all sorts of regional and time-period slang dictionaries. I often browse through relevant ones while writing a story. I also read a lot of diaries and oral histories.
I live in Cullowhee, North Carolina. That's where I teach, at Western Carolina University. That region is where my family has lived for a long time and that region is my landscape.
I don't even have a choice. Rachel thought how that was pretty much true of everything now, that you got one choice at the beginning but if you didn't choose right, and she hadn't, things got narrow real quick. Like trying to wade a river, she thought. You take a wrong step and set your foot on a wobbly rock or in a drop-off and you're swept away, and all you can do then is try to survive.
Faulkner came from my region and taught me how you could write about a place.
Each suicidal drama occurs in the mind of a unique individual.
Susannah Heschel's The Aryan Jesus is a brilliant and erudite investigation of the convergence between major trends in German Protestantism and Nazi racial anti-Semitism. By concentrating on the history of the Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Religious Life, Heschel describes in forceful detail the Nazification of all aspects of Protestant theology, including the Aryanization of Jesus himself. This is a highly original and important contribution to our understanding of the Third Reich.
You can't make people believe in you if you play a horror part with your tongue in your cheek.
A straight nose is a great help if one wishes to look serious'.