76 Quotes by Robert Stone

When rewriting, move quickly. It’s a little like cutting your own hair.

You should let dialogue get as nearly out of control as you can. Characters should say what they say to each other instead of what they mean to say. The worst purpose of dialogue is to elicit information: “You know why we’re out on this space station, Carruthers – to save the universe!”

It’s easy to create a country, all you have to do is to think of a name for it.

I’ve always remembered. This fellow said to me – if you think someones’doing you wrong, it’s not for you to judge. Kill them first and then God can do the judging.

Everybody’s after a new morning. What do we have to run up and salute tomorrow?

You don’t want to depend on an editor. If you want to regret something for the rest of your life, you want to make sure you’re responsible for it.

I start early in the morning. I’m usually out in the woods with the dog as soon as it gets light; then I drink a whole lot of tea and start as early as I can, and I go as long as I can.

I really, really wanted to write. I loved language. I loved literature. I loved reading. I never read a foreign language, I’m afraid, but I loved Flaubert. I loved the 19th-century classics. I love Thomas Hardy. I wanted to be a goof on a bus, but I wanted to write more.

I think everybody must be aware that this society is a whole lot shakier now than it was before the war. I was trying to examine, in ‘Dog Soldiers,’ the process of that blow falling on America.