'Olive Kitteridge' is a masterpiece: The writing is so perfect you don't even notice it; the story is so vivid it's less like reading a story than experiencing it firsthand. Melissa Bank
When I sit down to write, I don't have any real goals except to follow one good sentence with another... I'm not the kind of writer who has a map. Melissa Bank
I live by Edith Wharton's rule to get rid of anything neither useful nor beautiful. So I put the TV out on the street. Melissa Bank
Whenever people say they didn't like the main character of a book, they mean they didn't like the book. The main character has to be a friend? I don't get that. Melissa Bank
Basically, all anyone has to do is ask me for fun details or tell me to be creative, and my mind turns to mud. I am instantly the most boring person you've ever met. Melissa Bank
I feel in some ways I've had a difficult life. And it makes me the kind of writer I am, in what I value, what I respect, what I hold dear.Melissa Bank
Voyagers discover that the world can never be larger than the person that is in the world; but it is impossible to foresee this, it is impossible to be warned. James A.Baldwin
There are few things more dreadful than dealing with a man who knows he is going under, in his own eyes, and in the eyes of others. Nothing can help that man. What is left of that man flees from what is left of human attention. James A.Baldwin
The question of sexual dominance can exist only in the nightmare of that soul which has armed itself, totally, against the possibility of the changing motion of conquest and surrender, which is love. James A.Baldwin
Pessimists are the people who have no hope for themselves or for others. Pessimists are also people who think the human race is beneath their notice, that they're better than other human beings. James A.Baldwin
The face of a lover is an unknown, precisely because it is invested with so much of oneself. It is a mystery, containing, like all mysteries, the possibility of torment. James A.Baldwin
Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. James A.Baldwin
The writer's greed is appalling. He wants, or seems to want, everything and practically everybody, in another sense, and at the same time, he needs no one at all. James A.Baldwin
When a man asks himself what is meant by action he proves that he isn't a man of action. Action is a lack of balance. In order to act you must be somewhat insane. A reasonably sensible man is satisfied with thinking. James A.Baldwin
It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive. James A.Baldwin
There is a 'sanctity' involved with bringing a child into this world: it is better than bombing one out of it. James A.Baldwin
Every legend, moreover, contains its residuum of truth, and the root function of language is to control the universe by describing it. James A.Baldwin
The only thing that white people have that black people need, or should want, is power-and no one holds power forever. James A.Baldwin
Most of us are about as eager to be changed as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock. James A.Baldwin