Quotes by Jess Walter

About Jess Walter:

Jess Walter is an American author of six novels, a collection of short stories, and a non-fiction book. His books have been published in twenty-six countries and translated into twenty-eight languages. He is the recipient of the Edgar Allan Poe Award, among others, and was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2006.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

I wake at 5 or 5:30 most mornings, make myself a latte and grab a cookie, write until 10 or 11, go have my favorite meal, 'second breakfast,' or grab coffee with friends, or play basketball. Then, around noon, I begin apologizing via email for the ma...

Jess Walter

I tend to like the last sentence I just wrote, which is: 'It was late in the fall and the trees lining our driveway had turned red like a row of burning matches.'

Jess Walter

My first book, about Ruby Ridge, was made into a miniseries on CBS in 1996, and since then, I've dabbled in Hollywood, pitched a few things, sold a couple of screenplays and a pilot that I wrote with a buddy from Spokane, flirted with seeing 'Citizen...

Jess Walter

With Facebook and Twitter, we're all our own little publicists in a way.

Jess Walter

I think suspense should be like any other color on a writer's palette. I suppose I'm in the minority but I think it's crazy for 'literary fiction' to divorce itself from stories that are suspenseful, and assign anything with cops or spies or criminal...

Jess Walter

There was a real conflation of hero and victim in the wake of 9/11, in our perverse desire to create a triumphant myth out of pure tragedy.

Jess Walter

I think I would explode in flames of irony if I were to option an idea that I was satirizing in a novel.

Jess Walter

I come from a newspaper background, so maybe I'm attuned to current events.

Jess Walter

Often, the fact that I haven't done something as a writer is all the reason I need to try it.

Jess Walter

I've been simultaneously drawn to and repelled from Hollywood for years.

Jess Walter

My poems... the ones that start out as jokes become these big ponderous things and the ones that start out ponderous devolve into jokes.

Jess Walter

I pretty much drink a cup of coffee, write in my journal for a while, and then sit at a computer in my office and torture the keys. My one saving grace as a writer is that, if I'm having trouble with the novel I'm writing, I write something else, a p...

Jess Walter

The first seven years that I wrote fiction, I sent out stories and a novel and made a total of $25.

Jess Walter

Let's get right to it: On page 5 of Paul Murray's dazzling new novel, 'Skippy Dies,'... Skippy dies. If killing your protagonist with more than 600 pages to go sounds audacious, it's nothing compared with the literary feats Murray pulls off in this h...

Jess Walter

Ultimately if you're a journalist, one day you're writing about figure skating, one day a political debate. I loved that about reporting. I like throwing my energies into various corners of the world.

Jess Walter

I'm a writer, and the subject is less important than the act of writing itself.

Jess Walter

I have this theory, that this will be the only city that future archaeologists find, Las Vegas. The dry climate will preserve it all and teams of scientists in the year 5000 will carefully sweep and scrape away the sand to find pyramids and castles a...

Jess Walter

Forget being 'discovered.' All you can do is write. If you write well enough, and are stubborn enough to embrace failure, and if you happen to fall into the narrow categories that the book market recognizes, then you might make a little money. Otherw...

Jess Walter

I cling to the idea that Herman Melville had to work at the end of his career watching ships in a dock, as a shipping agent in New York. Any writer who thinks they should be given patronage because of their gift... you don't have to look too far in h...

Jess Walter

I think most Hollywood meetings are silly and I truly despise pitching. It's insane to expect someone to come in and tell you the story before they've written it, and buying an idea from someone who can explain it rather than write it is like choosin...

Jess Walter

I probably would have gone the M.F.A. route except I was a dad at 19, and it made more sense to go to work for a newspaper and support a kid that way. But the funny thing is, that detour became the most important step in my developing as a novelist.

Jess Walter

Author Bio

  • NameJess Walter
  • DescriptionAmerican writer
  • BornJuly 20, 1965
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionJournalist; Writer; Novelist
  • AwardsEdgar Award