I have always been taught to be proud of being Latina, proud of being Mexican, and I was. I was probably more proud of being a "label" than of being a human being, that's the way most of us were taught.
In writing, a good guy must never break any of the Ten Commandments. A bad guy must break every one. That's why writing female characters is so much fun. They're not GUYS at all.
Never try to keep it professional, keep it smutty, write with bodily fluids on sandpaper, and damn the men with clipboards in white suits, the literary bean-counters, the prose police.
This helping-people business was an attractive idea, I'll admit, because up to now I'd not done much more than be, and when I wasn't just being, I'd caused some pain, too.
Might we consider boredom as not only necessary for our life but also as one of its greatest blessings? A gift, pure and simple, a precious chance to be alone with our thoughts and alone with God?
You have seven writers in your basement?” Donald nods, signing, “They like it here. There’s a poet, a couple of novelists, an opera librettist, an essay writer . . . . They don’t usually make much trouble.
She wanted me to remember that pleasure is political--for the capacity to relax and play renews the spirit and makes it possible for us to come to the work of writing clearer, ready for the journey. (bell hooks about Toni Cade Bambara)
...what really makes for readability is not clarity but attitude: the attitude of your prose toward out elusive friend the Reader and the role you invent for that invented being in your invented world.
The ‘coons had enjoyed a real party, and my trashcan had been the piñata! They’d obviously indulged in an evening of feasting on our wares and then staggered off the property loaded up with our birdseed as a little take-home gift!
In our native terms, the ironic style is often compounded with the sardonic and the hard-boiled; even the effortlessly superior. But irony originates in the glance and the shrug of the loser, the outsider, the despised minority. It is a nuance that c...
When it comes to literature, we are all groping in the dark, even the writer. Especially the writer. And that is a good thing--maybe one of the best things about literature. It's always an adventure of some kind.
What a vast fertility of pleasure books hold for me! I went in and found the table laden with books. I looked in and sniffed them all. I could not resist carrying this one off and broaching it. I think I could happily live here and read forever.
I enjoy almost everything. Yet I have some restless searcher in me. Why is there not a discovery in life? Something one can lay hands on and say “This is it”? My depression is a harassed feeling. I’m looking: but that’s not it — that’s no...
Daily life is always extraordinary when rendered precisely. We can unlock our lives with a pencil tip.
Plot joined the expedition unwooed, as a necessary companion. It was not the scout. The scout was a certain mood. I followed that mood, and let the shape of the story flow from that.
By mastering character and plot, you give your book a fighting chance and without character and plot, no book can survive.
We walk through so many myths of each other and ourselves; we are so thankful when someone sees us for who we are and accepts us.
If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot…reading is the creative center of a writer’s life…you cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done ...
As it happened, all three of us turned out to be real writers--a coincidence almost too large to be termed mere coincidence in a society where literally tens of thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands) of college students aspire to the writer's trade ...
Most American writers don't get asked their opinion on current affairs, whereas in Europe and England, we still do. There are writers here who are the most sophisticated commentators, but they're not asked. Like Don DeLillo, who sort of forecast most...
The O. Henry has become lingua franca among writers for saying, 'That guy can write a story.' It's prestigious, respected, coveted, dreamed about. It's very satisfying to be included in this group of writers. Here's a koan: Could O. Henry win an O. H...
