62 Quotes by Deborah Eisenberg

When one contemplated Portia, when one contemplated Sharon, when one contemplated one's own apparently pointless, utterly trivial being, the questions hung all around one, as urgent as knives at the throat. But the instant one tried to grasp one of them and turn it to one's own purpose and pierce through the murk, it became blunt and useless as a piece of cardboard.

I’m a bit of an expert on anger, having suffered from it all through my youth, when I was both brunt and font. It’s certainly the most miserable state to be in but it’s also tremendously gratifying, really—rage feels justified. And it’s an excellent substitute for action. Why would you want to sacrifice rage to go about the long, difficult, dreary business of making something more tolerable?

Politics is a matter of human transaction. I consider absolutely everything political, because all fiction involves relationships between people, and relationships between people always include matters of power, of equity, of communication.

I always need huge amounts of time to do anything.

I believe that people are what happened to their grandparents.

I had no thought of being a writer. I never wanted to do anything. I'm tremendously lazy.

I just want to be on my own branch twittering.

I like the eclipses, the synaptic jumps of short stories. The reader has to participate very actively in the experience.

I suppose I'm always looking for a sort of acuity of perception either in my characters or about my characters.