84 Quotes by Stewart O'Nan

It is not brilliance or facility that is necessary, but the determination to bear and even enjoy the dull process of wading into one's own bad prose again, and one more time, and then once again, with the utmost concentration and taste, looking for opportunities to mine deeper.

I don't like coming home. It keeps me from being nostalgic, which by nature I am. Even before the plane begins its descent, I find myself dreading the questions left unanswered by my childhood.

You couldn’t relive your life, skipping the awful parts, without losing what made it worthwhile. You had to accept it as a whole – like the world, or the person you loved.

All stories teach us something, and promise us something, whether they’re true or invented, legend or fact.

Saul Bellow once said, ‘A writer is a reader who has moved to emulation’ – which I think is true. I just started writing and made that jump from reader to writer and learned how hard it was, but also how much fun it was – losing myself in these imaginary worlds.

Getting inside your character’s head and letting the reader see the world through not just their eyes but their sensibility creates an intimacy that can’t be duplicated in any other medium.

I don’t like coming home. It keeps me from being nostalgic, which by nature I am. Even before the plane begins its descent, I find myself dreading the questions left unanswered by my childhood.

The happiest she’d ever been was with him, and the saddest. Was that the true test of love?

You’re proud of your ability to both believe and question everything. Secretly you think everyone does, but at some point they give in, surrender to the comfort of certainty. It’s too much trouble, this endless jousting of belief and doubt, too tiring. Finally you suppose it will break you, yet strangely it’s the only thing that keeps you going – though, true, at times you feel unbalanced, even somewhat mad.