107 Quotes by Ron Rash

The ReleaseIn those last moments beforethe platter of salt and dirtlay on his stomach, wax-lighthad waved across a mute heart, his son waited by the bed.Raised to believe the soul leftthe body with its last breath,he listened for death's rattle,then pressed his lips like a kissto his father's lips, and tookinto his mouth the breath that had given him breath, a lifedistilled to one stir of airsoft as moth wings against palms,held a moment, then let go.

I think writing a poem is like being a greyhound. Writing a novel is like being a mule. You go up one long row, then down another, and try not to look up too often to see how far you still have to go.

I think that's what I love about writing, is the ability to try to, in a sense, take a vacation from yourself and try to enter the sensibility of another time, another character, another place.

I learnt how to hunt rattlesnakes with an eagle for Serena.

I usually do at least a dozen drafts and progressively make more-conscious decisions. Because I've always believed stories are closer to poems than novels, I spend a lot of time on the story's larger rhythms, such as sentence and paragraph length, placement of flashbacks and dialogue.

Sometimes I know what my characters are moving away from or toward; more often I just wait and see. For instance, though I knew Sinkler in 'The Trusty' was going for water, I did not know that he would meet a fetching young farm wife until I got him into her front yard.

Faulkner came from my region and taught me how you could write about a place.

Cool-Hand Luke' is one of my favorite movies.

What I've become convinced makes a writer are the days you hate it, the days you'd rather stick those pencils in your eyes. Sometimes I almost punish myself - if I'm not going be able to write, I'm not going be able to do anything else. I just sit there and wait.