David Ebershoff: The soles of the best writers, a professor once told...

Last year when my grandma fell and broke her hip she couldn't paint her toenails anymore. So my grandpa started doing it for her, even after he fell and broke his hip, too. For me, that's love.

David Ebershoff

grandpa grandma years

I know someone loves me from how they say my name. Like with my mom and dad, when they say "Benjamin" it's like my name is safe in their mouth.

David Ebershoff

dad mom names

I trust you have seen the ocean. If you have, then you have witnessed the divine. How barren the ground is in comparison! If I could count the hours I have spent staring out at it! And yet those hours never feel lost. I cannot imagine how else I could refill them were I given a second chance.

David Ebershoff

second-chance imagine ocean

I must say a few words about memory. It is full of holes. If you were to lay it out upon a table, it would resemble a scrap of lace. I am a lover of history . . . [but] history has one flaw. It is a subjective art, no less so than poetry or music. . . . The historian writes a truth. The memoirist writes a truth. The novelist writes a truth. And so on. My mother, we both know, wrote a truth in The 19th Wife– a truth that corresponded to her memory and desires. It is not the truth, certainly not. But a truth, yes . . . Her book is a fact. It remains so, even if it is snowflaked with holes.

David Ebershoff

mother memories art

Isn't it interesting what a stranger can offer? A little wisdom, a little mercy, a little love.

David Ebershoff

stranger littles interesting

The agony of martyrdom is almost too much to bear. In the early hours, when the loss is fresh, there is no comfort in knowing Glory will live on. We speak of the martyrs in History but we cannot know the actual pain they suffered in their final living hours. They enter the realm of the mythic, but we must never forget these were men like ourselves. When their flesh is torn, they cry out. They suffer as you or I would suffer, although more bravely. Remember Christ. Although I am now an enemy to Joseph's legacy, I shudder when recalling his pain.

David Ebershoff

pain loss men

I first read 'The Scarlet Letter' when I was fifteen. In it, I found a familiar vision of religious intolerance to the one around me. I grew up in the 1980s, when televangelists, with their fluffed up hair and their tears, self-righteously denounced all kinds of sinners, reserving a special, full-throated enthusiasm for gay people.

David Ebershoff

me vision hair people

We are born, we live, we disappear. One of the chilling aspects of history is the swiftness with which it carries us into oblivion.

David Ebershoff

us live born history

When I see someone interesting on the subway - the lady with her new Bible or the delivery guy holding down a dozen Mylar balloons - my mind goes in two different directions. Where are they coming from? And where are they going?

David Ebershoff

down new mind bible

I'm not the kind of writer that can write eight hours a day... I'm the kind of writer that the more time I have, the less efficient I am.

David Ebershoff

i-am more day time

Since I was a kid, I feel most confident when I'm reading.

David Ebershoff

confident feel kid reading

In some ways, writing a novel, especially a novel set in the past and about characters who once lived, is about amassing enough details and arranging them properly in order to offer the reader a verisimilitude that satisfies his or her curiosity about the story at hand.

David Ebershoff

story curiosity writing past

An artist sees that which does not yet exist. He or she imagines a future others cannot perceive. The artist - and the writer - reshapes reality so that it becomes even more vivid and lasting.

David Ebershoff

she future artist reality

Marriage fascinates me: how we negotiate its span, how we change within it, how it changes itself, and why some relationships survive and others do not. There isn't a single marriage that couldn't provide enough narrative arc for a novel.

David Ebershoff

me single marriage change

We struggle throughout our lives to learn to accept the shell that transports us through this world, and many of us take great effort to change it. I believe everyone has at least once looked in the mirror and thought, 'That is not me. I am someone else. The world cannot see me as I really am.'

David Ebershoff

mirror i-am me change

Even the most meticulous historians work subjectively. The historian's point of view, his or her selection of subject and sources, the emphasis, the tone - all of these lead to subjective history, inevitably so. I do not say this as a criticism, merely as an observation.

David Ebershoff

view criticism work history

I love to read history; at its best, it is an art.

David Ebershoff

best love history art

I always love novels that open up a subject to me - like raising a window to a beautiful, mysterious world outside.

David Ebershoff

me beautiful love world

If the Latterday Saints had not abandoned plural marriage, they would have remained a fringe religion and would never have moved into mainstream American culture. Today, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints thrives. It is one of the fastest growing religions in the country and is the most successful American-born religion.

David Ebershoff

marriage today culture religion

'The Danish Girl' was published in 2000. Then it, too, would disappear, as most books do. It fell out of print almost everywhere. I wrote other books and, as an editor, worked on dozens more. Yet always, Lili stayed with me.

David Ebershoff

more me always girl

The soles of the best writers, a professor once told me, are worn down to holes. This is an incomplete measure, but the image of a writer grinding his or her shoes against curbs and cobblestones stuck with me. The story is always out there, the details around the corner or down the alley.