61 Quotes by Padgett Powell

I was a commercial roofer before this, until about age thirty. I will not work others under me and do not want to work under others.

If you're going to write a book that might, in its very best accidental career, sell 30,000 copies, you've got to have a day job.

In my experience, great reviews almost always ensure no sales.

When I write, I want something to sound good itself.

Writing books is a nice retreat. There's nothing quite like diving into a book for a few hours. That is a big time vacation.

All this is rather pretentious and fey to even talk about, but Flannery O'Connor sat down to write stories. The rest of us, some of us, don't have that kind of wit and genius. We don't do that. We sit down and have some accidents.

As a boy, I was a member of a club run by the famous reptile showman Ross Allen, and the club sent its members pseudoscientific papers mimeographed on construction paper with a three-hole punch.

At every Christmas, I fail to remember the daughters' shoe sizes, and they are not growing, but grown. After ostensible hard thought about who needs what, I have failed to give good gifts; I have failed to receive good gifts.

Christmas is the season I use to clock failure in life. It stops time, as it were, on the year - where you are in it, where you are in your travail unto the grave.