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Sing You a Book: Josh Ritter Gets Out of His Comfort Zone
I think songs are really great, kind of, delivery vehicles for a story. They allow you to make your own conclusions. Good songs never give you everything. So I really believe a song is like an envelope. A novel, you can unfold from a song.
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Overnight Sensation? Edith Pearlman on Fame and the Importance of Short Fiction
People are made by the books they read and I think I am finished. That is to say, my making is finished.
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Crime Pays: Jo Nesbø Talks about Killing Harry Hole and the Best Job in the World
When you write, it’s important to do it while you have the enthusiasm for the idea. Maybe the most important period of your writing is when are convinced that your idea is the best idea any writer ever has had. So you have to use that energy because the time will come when you wake up in the morning and you will doubt your idea.
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Robert Birnbaum in Conversation with Anne Enright
You have to sink in order to write a book. I don’t mean in a depressive sort of way. You have to diffuse as much as anything else. Just in those early days -- to lose control of it and to be helpless and not know what you are doing. And then the focus comes sentence by sentence.
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Robert Birnbaum in Conversation with John Sayles
There are guys who are offshoots of the Tea Party who go around with an American flag and say, “Kiss this or I am going to punch you in the head.” And they punch people in the head who don’t do it. They are usually a little drunk at the time, but it is something that you can run unto.
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Robert Birnbaum and Darin Strauss
I wanted to write about the young me as I would write about a character in a novel. And look at all that person's flaws and hold them up to the light. Because I think that’s what we get out of good fiction, too. Good fiction teaches you how to live.
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