Tom Barbash Quotes

#1. When you teach, it's sometimes necessary to consciously not write for a month or two - and then pick a time in the future to sink back in. It makes you less frustrated and more in control. I do best when I give myself breaks and come back hungry.

Tom Barbash

#2. I think writers tend to hear a different message from the ones our friends and acquaintances intend. We see what's revealed, which makes us dangerous.

Tom Barbash

#3. I'm always relearning things I thought I'd learned for good a while back.

Tom Barbash

#4. I tend to listen to my friends and family empathetically, and I try to help work through their problems from the inside. I try to adopt their thinking.

Tom Barbash

#5. Being a reporter took me out of myself and that shaped me as a writer.

Tom Barbash

#6. I'll write about California someday, I imagine, but I don't know when.

Tom Barbash

#7. I believe that we can access stories, and voices from those around us, more easily often than from our own imperfect memories.

Tom Barbash

#8. One good thing the teaching has given me is the ability to read and revise my own work.

Tom Barbash

#9. I think the second, or outsider's, perspective can come as you layer a story. It's as though you've grabbed a secondary character and asked them, "What do you make of this guy?" and the hope is that the answer surprises you as the writer.

Tom Barbash

#10. Of course I'd sometimes have characters from downstate living upstate, but it took a while for me to start writing about where I grew up.

Tom Barbash

#11. Susan Rebecca White has a keen sense for how her characters talk and think. An impressive debut.

Tom Barbash

#12. My characters tend, if wounded, to be emotionally resourceful. Often they're in that way station between when loss happens and when it can be fully comprehended. In the meantime they're fighting to get something back, and occasionally they prevail in surprising ways.

Tom Barbash

#13. I think it's probably better to make a region your own, and then maybe you can go somewhere else, but a lot of great writers have stuck to one region.

Tom Barbash

#14. I'm suspicious of epiphanies, because they so rarely last.

Tom Barbash

#15. When I teach, I try to assign writers from whom I can learn.

Tom Barbash

#16. I think one's person's unlikeable is another's lovable.

Tom Barbash

#17. I had written about a small hamlet upstate, and had been called into a meeting about my story, which, as it turned out, had upset a lot of people.

Tom Barbash

#18. I think the voice can carry a story.

Tom Barbash

#19. I think narrators expect a high level of intimacy with their readers, and vice versa.

Tom Barbash