Walking on the land or digging in the fine soil I am intensely aware that time quivers slightly, changes occurring in imperceptible and minute ways, accumulating so subtly that they seem not to exist. Yet the tiny shifts in everything--cell replication, the rain of dust motes, lengthening hair, wind-pushed rocks--press inexorably on and on.

Annie Proulx

Categorized in : Hair Rain Rocks

You know, one of the tragedies of real life is that there is no background music.

Annie Proulx

tragedy real life-is

You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.

Annie Proulx

reading writing teacher

We face up to awful things because we can't go around them, or forget them. The sooner you get it over with, the sooner you say 'Yes, it happened, and there's nothing I can do about it,' the sooner you can get on with your own life. You've got children to bring up. So you've got to get over it. What we have to get over, somehow we do. Even the worst things.

Annie Proulx

acceptance life children

What I find to be very bad advice is the snappy little sentence, 'Write what you know.' It is the most tiresome and stupid advice that could possibly be given. If we write simply about what we know we never grow. We don't develop any facility for languages, or an interest in others, or a desire to travel and explore and face experience head-on. We just coil tighter and tighter into our boring little selves. What one should write about is what interests one.

Annie Proulx

stupid self writing

If you get the landscape right, the characters will step out of it, and they'll be in the right place.

Annie Proulx

landscape writing character

Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.

Annie Proulx

reading writing teacher

Anyway, there's something wrong with everybody and it's up to you to know what you can handle.

Annie Proulx

up-to-you handle knows

I think it's important to leave spaces in a story for readers to fill in from their own experience.

Annie Proulx

space writing thinking

We're all strange inside. We learn how to disguise our differences as we grow up.

Annie Proulx

growing-up strange differences

What we fear we often rage against.

Annie Proulx

rage

Develop craftsmanship through years of wide reading.

Annie Proulx

wide reading years

It is my feeling that a story is not finished until it is read, and that the reader finishes it through his or her life experience, prejudices, worldview and thoughts.

Annie Proulx

prejudice views feelings

I find it satisfying and intellectually stimulating to work with the intensity, brevity, balance and word play of the short story.

Annie Proulx

balance play hair

I wish I knew how to quit you.

Annie Proulx

real-love movie romantic

And I think that's important, to know how the water's gone over the dam before you start to describe it. It helps to have been over the dam yourself.

Annie Proulx

adversity water thinking

... there are four women in every man’s heart. The Maid in the Meadow, the Demon Lover, the Stouthearted Woman, the Tall and Quiet Woman.

Annie Proulx

maids heart men

Everybody that went away suffered a broken heart. "I'm coming back some day," they all wrote. But never did. The old life was too small to fit anymore.

Annie Proulx

fit broken heart

In a rough way the short story writer is to the novelist as a cabinetmaker is to a house carpenter.

Annie Proulx

story-writers insightful house

I am influenced by words and the chewiness of language

Annie Proulx

language

Change itself is what fascinates me. I am drawn, as a moth to the flame, by edge situations, by situations of metamorphosis.

Annie Proulx

metamorphosis crafts flames