37 Quotes by Ron Carlson

I tell students, when in doubt, to title their story after the smallest concrete object in their story. I warn them off plays on words, ('The Rent Also Rises'--no; 'Life in My Cat House'--no) and no grand reaches, either. 'Reverence,' 'Respect,' 'Regret,' 'Greed,' 'Adventure,' 'Retribution.' And never use the worst title of all time, 'The Gift,' a story I read six times a year.

The world is glutted with magnificent three-page starts, and the road to hell is paved with unfinished manuscripts.

We live in a society that doesn’t offer any support or appreciation for ventures that aren’t clearly articulated and aligned for a goal. A writer gets past this. It’s going to be a mess before you’re finished, and you may not have a name for the mess or understand its utilitarian purposes. There aren't words for everything. For now, we’ll call it the draft of a story.

Get down, get naked, get savage.

I'm not trying as a writer to be smart or to understand the inner workings of my narrator, I'm trying to survive the typing of this story.

Writing a book is very personal. It's a very personal relationship. A book will start with something as simple as two men talking about work. That gets the fire going. Sustaining that fire is the hard work. It takes attention and empathy to hone the characters.

Life is an aggregate of experience, which continually surprises us.

My first novel was called 'Betrayed by F. Scott Fitzgerald,' about the difficulties of graduating from college, the longing and mourning you feel when all your promise seems to float away.

No one among us suffers the radical appreciation for coffee that I do. It calls to me, but I have learned not to listen.