Zitat des Tages von Jim Harrison:
Writing as a woman presents enormous problems but I have attempted it several times and haven't had many complaints.
Other than fishing and a little bird-hunting, all I do is write.
I think the trouble with artists or chefs who whine about criticism is that if you love the good reviews, you have to at least read the bad ones.
Your kids inevitably want to move where they had their vacations when they were younger.
I used to have this illusion that time and remote areas prepare you for the world. Our moms used to think that kind of thing. Well, it doesn't prepare you for the world at all!
I see more genuine sociability between the races in Mississippi than I see in Michigan. No question.
I do mourn my characters. I wrote an essay once where I was sure that far back in a marsh there was a hummock - a little hill of hardwoods - and an old farm house, where all the heroines in my novels lived together with all my beloved dead dogs. I've discussed this with my therapist, naturally. He says it's okay in fair amounts.
I admit to occasionally sharing the financial hysteria of the rest of the country, the urgency to save more for the family in case you can't write any more.
Success and money can really be quite blinding.
I don't know what psychotherapy does. I have been seeing the same person for 26 years now.
I enjoy about 1 out of 100 movies, it's about the same proportion to books published that I care to read.
I should add that I very much enjoy certain cities especially Paris, New York and Chicago.
The reviews are getting better, but they always do, in time, if you're still alive.
I can write anywhere.
So when I made some money, I didn't have any idea how one handled such a situation because no one in our family ever had any money.
New Yorkers are mostly interested in New York - in case you haven't noticed.
Naturally we would prefer seven epiphanies a day and an earth not so apparently devoid of angels.
Sometimes, discomfort is very uncomfortable. Anybody can get occasionally tired of it, and then it can change fast, where it's comfort that disturbs you.
The person that was closest to me growing up was my sister, who died at 19. She was an incredibly powerful girl, deeply committed to art and literature.
There is a neurologist, a woman over at Harvard who wanted me to come talk to them, and in France I have a lot of readers in the sciences. I can't tell you why.
I rarely read or buy a book because of a review.
I've never felt influenced by Ernest Hemingway though I suppose there is something inevitable there.
Unlike a lot of writers, I don't have any craving to be understood.
I'm actually forced to write about Michigan because as a native of that state it's the place I know best.
The fact is, the media never gets off the interstate unless there's a major explosion.
There's something frightening about finding a woman who would take your heart.
I got $30 from Nation magazine for a poem and $500 for my first book of poems.
I'm not rational enough to be a good journalist.
I do have trouble with titles.
I asked a French critic a couple of years ago why my books did so well in France. He said it was because in my novels people both act and think. I got a kick out of that.
Michigan is two radically different places - the North and the South which makes for good drama and contrast.
As a child, I was an obsessive reader, as was everybody in my family all winter long with my father. I think I was only 8 when I read Edward Gibbon's 'The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.'
The only advice I can give to aspiring writers is don't do it unless you're willing to give your whole life to it. Red wine and garlic also helps.
The old fun thing is when somebody typed up the first chapter of War and Peace. And then made a precis of the rest of it and sent it out and only one publisher recognized it.
Between the two dream coasts, we're just called flyover country... If you aren't known as an amorphous Eastern Seaboard writer, you're dismissed as a regional author.
I used to get criticized for putting food in novels.