'The Talk-Funny Girl' opens with a glum picture of a desperately poor rural New England family. Poverty has so brutalized the family that the ordinary laws and rules governing humanity have eroded, turning systems of behavior upside down. Carolyn See More Quotes by Carolyn See More Quotes From Carolyn See Every word a woman writes changes the story of the world, revises the official version. Carolyn See women stories writing A great novelist must open the reader's heart, allow the reader to remember the vastness and glory -- and shame and shabbiness -- of what it is to be human. Carolyn See vastness novelists heart Women want a family life that glitters and is stable. They don't want some lump spouse watching ice hockey in the late hours of his eighteenth beer. They want a family that is so much fun and is so smart that they look forward to Thanksgiving rather than regarding it with a shudder. That's the glitter part. The stable part is, obviously, they don't want to be one bead on a long necklace of wives. They want, just like men, fun, love, fame, money and power. And equal pay for equal work. Carolyn See women smart fun I don't know what people think they're trying to do with literary novels, but they're trying to do something. They're trying to change the world, although that's so crazy. That's just delusional. But I recognize that it's crazy. It will be a little dinky change. Carolyn See crazy people thinking Reality is when you pay the rent. Get caught in traffic or your car breaks down. Really it's an AM/FM sort of thing. You've got reality and then there's the miraculous and the transcendent. And once you start, time stops. Carolyn See car pay reality It's my experience that you first feel the impulse to write in your chest. It's like falling in love, only more so. It feels like something criminal. It feels like unspeakably wild sex. So, think: When you feel the overpowering need to go out and find some unspeakably wild sex, do you rush to tell your mom about it? Carolyn See falling-in-love mom sex I try to write in the morning when I'm working on a novel. You get up, you have breakfast, you read the paper, you make a couple of phone calls, and then you sit on the couch and start. I use felt pen and white notepaper. Carolyn See couple writing morning I figure 1000 words a day, or four pages, and sometimes I'll write more, but I'll try not to. Because I think you don't want to exhaust what it is you're writing about, so the next day you would have to gear up for a brand new scene. Carolyn See next-day writing thinking I'm absolutely not an athletic person, but I used to be married to a runner. He would say that, especially in long-distance races, you could tell who was going to win and who wasn't, and if the person was present behind his eyes, if he was looking around and paying attention, you could be pretty sure he wasn't going to win. The person who was tranced out had a much better chance of winning. Because he or she had lost his or her governing self. Carolyn See distance eye winning I play the same album over and over until the people in my house are ready to kill me. Carolyn See house play people I don't think you think of your audience as much as you think, when you're revising, how it holds together. I mean I think the first draft is art, and the second draft, third, fourth draft is craft. Putting it together so that it has a good pattern. Carolyn See mean art thinking I notice that I only publish once every four years. It takes a couple of years to write a book and then, for me, for one reason or another, it usually takes about a year of sort of dicking around before I start up. I write a review or little magazine pieces and touring with the other book. But mainly it's just you're not ready, I'm not ready to start another. You're just not up for it. Carolyn See couple writing book Life is a matter of courtship and wooing, flirting and chatting. Carolyn See life-is-a chatting matter life I've been at the very bottom of poverty, and it's not so bad. It's even kind of interesting. You can live there with a certain amount of style. Carolyn See live you poverty style I don't think I'm interested in writing women's novels anymore. Carolyn See anymore think women writing Very much as men project weird fantasies on women, the people in New York project weird fantasies on California. Carolyn See weird women men people I hope someday to see California literature become a part of mainstream American literature, and I hope to be part of that process. Carolyn See see literature process hope Whenever I open a book about jazz, I turn to the index and look for Lennie Tristano, the incredible pianist; Lee Konitz, the luminous alto sax player; and Warne Marsh, the tenor player who captured some of the most beautiful sounds in the world. Carolyn See look beautiful book world What is 'cool,' anyway? Maybe it's Warne Marsh, almost totally obscure and penniless, coming in late to a fourth-rate Hollywood nightclub, playing like an angel with a couple of sidemen, but never speaking to or even acknowledging another human being. Carolyn See never cool late angel I don't believe you can buy or sell 'cool.' Carolyn See buy cool you believe
