43 Quotes by Ben Dolnick

Of course I knew that writing was terrifically hard work and that there was no secret code, as in a video game, that would unlock Tolstoy-mode, enabling me to crank out canon-worthy novellas before lunch.

I've sold all but one of my microphones, put away my mini-notebooks, stopped scouring the Internet for scraps of wisdom.

Writing is a sufficiently lonely and mysterious pastime that I don't begrudge myself a talisman or two, so long as they don't become ways of distracting myself from the glum inescapability of actual work.

For a long time, since story collections look almost precisely like novels, I presumed that they were meant to be enjoyed in the same way as novels.

A short-story collection is harder to formulate pithy sentences about.

A novel quite possibly won't be good and, even more possibly, will have not-good parts, but at least it won't shape-shift on you; at least you can say that you're halfway through and know that this maps onto some clear, visualizable chunk of narrative.

I would love to love Saul Bellow, but by page fifty of 'Herzog', something within me has wandered into another room.

Oberst is one of those musicians that some people hate in a visceral, biological way.

If you were placing bets on which author would write the tenderest, most moving book about fatherhood, Philip Roth would probably come in at the bottom of the list.