Vivian Gornick, The Art of Memoir No. 2 “That’s the hardest thing to do—to stay with a sentence until it has said what it should say, and then to know when that has been accomplished.”

“Writing has been a torture for me. A pleasure, never.” —Vivian Gornick

Nathaniel Mackey, The Art of Poetry No. 107 “By making breath more evident, more material, more dwelled-upon, they make black breath matter, implicitly insist that black lives matter.”

“One was expected to write the first-person-singular narrative—the confessional, that kind of mode. I wasn’t particularly interested in doing that.” —Nathaniel Mackey

Lewis Lapham, The Art of Editing No. 4 “It is dangerous to excel at two different things. You run the risk of being underappreciated in one or the other.”

“Sometimes you completely change direction. Sometimes you get to the end of the third draft and understand it’s nonsense.” —Lewis Lapham

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John Cheever, The Art of Fiction No. 62 “Fiction must compete with first-rate reporting. If you cannot write a story that is equal to a factual account of battle in the streets or demonstrations, then you can't write a story.”

“The novel is an acute means of communication.” —John Cheever

Walter Mosley, The Art of Fiction No. 234 “All my editors have been white.”

“Baldwin is so cool in his anger, so smart.” —Walter Mosley

Kenzaburo Oe, The Art of Fiction No. 195 “I’ve cultivated the first-person style as opposed to the third person. It’s a problem. A really good novelist is able to write in the third person, but I have never been able to write well in the…

“I elaborate and elaborate and year by year my readers diminish. My style has become very difficult, very twisted, complicated.”—Kenzaburo Oe

Elena Ferrante, The Art of Fiction No. 228 “As a girl—twelve, thirteen years old—I was absolutely certain that a good book had to have a man as its hero, and that depressed me.”

“I see an effect of light and make a note of it. I see a plant in a meadow and try not to forget it. I make lists of words, I write down phrases I hear on the street.” —Elena Ferrante

Salman Rushdie, The Art of Fiction No. 186 “A story doesn’t have to be simple, it doesn’t have to be one-dimensional but, especially if it’s multidimensional, you need to find the clearest, most engaging way of telling it.”

“If you’re reading for the love of reading, you look for what it gives you.” —Salman Rushdie

Haruki Murakami, The Art of Fiction No. 182 “Even now, my ideal for writing fiction is to put Dostoyevsky and Chandler together in one book.”

“My ideal for writing fiction is to put Dostoyevsky and Chandler together in one book.” —Haruki Murakami

James Baldwin, The Art of Fiction No. 78 “After my best friend jumped off the bridge, I knew that I was next. So—Paris. With forty dollars and a one-way ticket.”

“I’m still learning how to write. I don’t know what technique is.” —James Baldwin

Percival Everett, The Art of Fiction No. 235 “What I want to do is write something that seems like it means something and doesn’t. I want to write a novel that even I don’t understand.”

“I needed to know more about a particular place than anyone else, and there was no way I was going to do that, so I had to create it.” —Percival Everett

Dennis Cooper, The Art of Fiction No. 213 “I think pornography is a very rich medium, and I’ve studied it closely and learned quite a lot as a writer from it.”

“I want my readers to want to understand the nature of the novel’s appeal more than, say, find out what happens to its characters.” —Dennis Cooper

Tahar Ben Jelloun, The Art of Fiction No. 159 “There is an important erotic element in A Thousand and One Nights, which is one of the keys to understanding the Orient.”

“One can’t write only what is likely to sell. A writer is not a shopkeeper. A writer creates an imaginary world that he transmits to others.” —Tahar Ben Jelloun

Margaret Atwood, The Art of Fiction No. 121 “Every novel is—at the beginning—the same opening of a door onto a completely unknown space.”

“All children ‘write.’ I suppose the real question is why do so many people give it up.” —Margaret Atwood

Jan Morris, The Art of the Essay No. 2 “[Imperialism] allowed people to break away from shackling old traditions and heritages. It introduced the world to fresh ideas and new opportunities. These are the contributions that matter for the…

“Another reason I tend to write about decline is because I don’t believe in pretending it doesn’t exist.” —Jan Morris

Claudia Rankine, The Art of Poetry No. 102 “I think of America as my audience, and inside that space are white people as well as people of color.”

“We’re all together inside a system that scripts and constructs not just behavior but imagination.” —Claudia Rankine

Imre Kertész, The Art of Fiction No. 220 “I tried to depict the human face of this history, I wanted to write a book that people would actually want to read.”

“Whenever I sat down to write, it felt like a tragic fate I had to endure. There is pleasure only in retrospect.” —Imre Kertész

Gary Indiana, The Art of Fiction No. 250 “I was desperate to write a novel, but I didn’t have a story. Whenever I tried to write fiction it was all about my own inner bullshit.”

“I was aware at an early age that this country is rotten to the core, but it took years to begin to understand why it was rotten, what produces the rot.” —Gary Indiana

George Saunders, The Art of Fiction No. 245 My first meeting with George Saunders took place in his home of ten years, a ranch house in the Catskills. The house stood on fifteen acres of hilly woods, crisscrossed by narrow paths that he…

“I once heard someone say that writers tend to come out of families in which it is understood that language is powerful.” —George Saunders

Geoff Dyer, The Art of Nonfiction No. 6 “The process of book writing for me is entirely one of trial and error.”

“Writing is often both what you aspire to and what you’re left with when other options have dried up.” —Geoff Dyer

Toni Morrison, The Art of Fiction No. 134 On female friendships: “Hating, fighting one another, and joining men in their condemnation of ourselves [is] a typical example of what dominated people do.”

“I’m gonna stay out here on the margin, and let the center look for me.” —Toni Morrison

Maxine Groffsky, The Art of Editing No. 3 “I know some people downtown assumed I was just a party girl, but I did get up early each morning.”

“We scrimped on supplies, used the lightest onionskin stationery, and delayed changing the typewriter ribbon. Correspondence from our office may have caused eye strain.” —Maxine Groffsky

Marilynne Robinson, The Art of Fiction No. 198 “I write novels quickly, which is not my reputation.”

“After I write a novel or a story, I miss the characters—I feel sort of bereaved.” —Marilynne Robinson

Ismail Kadare, The Art of Fiction No. 153 “I had three choices: to conform to my own beliefs, which meant death; complete silence, which meant another kind of death; to pay a tribute, a bribe. I chose the third solution by writing The Long…

“Three hours of human life or three centuries—it comes to the same thing.” —Ismail Kadare

Louis Auchincloss, The Art of Fiction No. 138 “I think Shakespeare got drunk after he finished King Lear. That he had a ball writing it.”

“Novels must have verisimilitude, and truth has little enough of that.” —Louis Auchincloss

Lorrie Moore, The Art of Fiction No. 167 “A novel is a daily labor over a period of years. But a story can be like a mad, lovely visitor, with whom you spend a rather exciting weekend.”

“An author’s life is different, complex, and ongoing, while a character’s life remains frozen.” —Lorrie Moore

Eudora Welty, The Art of Fiction No. 47 “Once you're into a story everything seems to apply—what you overhear on a city bus is exactly what your character would say on the page you're writing. Wherever you go, you meet part of your story.”

“So often I’m asked how I could have written a word with William Faulkner living in Mississippi, and this question amazes me. It was like living near a big mountain, something majestic—it made me happy to know it was there, all that work.” —Eudora Welty

George Saunders, The Art of Fiction No. 245 My first meeting with George Saunders took place in his home of ten years, a ranch house in the Catskills. The house stood on fifteen acres of hilly woods, crisscrossed by narrow paths that he…

“To write a decent story is such a huge and unlikely accomplishment that we shouldn’t care how long it takes.” —George Saunders

Pat Barker, The Art of Fiction No. 243 “Books stand or fall really on their endings. I don't think there's any such thing as a good novel that has a weak ending.”

“All fiction is about change over time, and I know writers who are stimulated by the desire to produce this moment of change.” —Pat Barker