9 Quotes by Joan Silber

A story is already over before we hear it. That is how the teller knows what it means.

Slowed time is -- or should be -- a way of pointing to what's important.

This is fictional time, where events play out and possibilities are exhausted, so that meaning can emerge.

[S]torytelling, in ancient and modern practice, is always a contemplation of the experience of time passing. A story depends on things not standing still, on the built-in condition of impermanence.

A story is entirely determined by what portion of time it chooses to narrate.

Length is weight in fiction, pretty much.

Fierce loyalty. That’s how the Kurds survived for two and a half thousand years while the Hitties and the Phrygians died out. Communal Loyalty.

People always went for the romantic interpretation; you couldn’t blame them for that. What they felt most strongly seemed most true. But other forces were operating in the world.

If you saw through everything, it made it hard to figure out what to do with yourself.