55 Quotes by David Means

As a story writer, you have work with sharp but relatively small tools, the picks of metaphor, the shovel blade of images, the trowel of point of view, and then you delicately lift and brush in the revision with love and care knowing that one slip, and you might damage an extremely delicate thing.

It's really hard to be a story writer - no matter how much acclaim you get - and not write a novel.

A few days after 9/11, I put the old cassette of 'Born in the U.S.A.,' twisted and worn, on the car deck as I drove past West Point, across the Bear Mountain Bridge, along the Hudson River. It was the perfect moment to hear it.

Alice Munro is an atomic writer blasting doors into narrative time.

I think most short story writers, at one time or another, over the course of several books, naturally skirt near the edge of one genre or another.

I write first drafts by hand, often out of the house somewhere, and then, when I've got a draft, type it up and let it sit, sometimes for a long time, and then when I'm ready, I work on revision.

It's better to know your story than not to know.

We're all building our narratives in our heads.

A good folk song tells you something you already know, in a form you're already familiar with, on terms that were set down long before you were born - when the country was primarily windblown dust, open wagon trains, and dysfunctional towns like Deadwood.