Top 32 Peter Orner Quotes
#1. Rarely is the pain of losing someone expressed with such directness, energy, and, yes, humor. The grief in Evan Kuhlman'sWolf Boyis palpable, and so is the flawed, honest humanity of his characters. Here is real loss and somehow, real catharsis.
Peter Orner
#2. A collection, for me, is a book of very diverse stories that somehow speak to each other, across wide geography, across time, years, decades.
Peter Orner
#3. If a novel or a story works, you don't stop thinking about it; it doesn't truly end.
Peter Orner
#4. I get diminishing returns when I bore myself in an interview.
Ben Harper
#5. There is no idea so bad that it cannot be made to look brilliant with the proper application of fonts and color.
Scott Adams
#6. I beat a story to within an inch of its life - that's when I know its done. Not before, not after.
Peter Orner
#7. Everybody, doesn't matter who you are, escapes time. And for me, nothing is stranger than the thought that kids are just kids. Nobody is just anything. Whether you are eight or eighty, you've got your own unique take on how weird this world is.
Peter Orner
#8. A stellar, fully-realized collection of stories ... grounded, wonderfully, in the river valleys of western Maine. You come away not only understanding a place but the soul of its people.
Peter Orner
#9. It comes down to this. When we die, not only will our bodies be gone, but so will the people we remember. We live in the world, and we recall the world, and one day we won't do either anymore. The church bells will ring and the drunks will drink.
Peter Orner
#10. One story I've been trying to write for years, and haven't been able to finish, is about a face I saw, just a glimpse of a face, in a max security prison in North Carolina. I'm still trying to understand what I saw in that guy's face.
Peter Orner
#11. But this is exactly why I read
and don't belong to a book group
because reading is the most individual thing there is. Why collectivize it? Didn't we have enough bad English teachers in school? Crowd sourcing and literature shouldn't mix.
Peter Orner
#12. The lake is always east. East is always the lake. Anywhere else he's ever been he never knows where he is.
Peter Orner
#13. I have a friend who teaches yoga (or is it pilates?), and she said that I don't seem to live in the moment. And I said, "Exactly!" I'd go nuts if I lived in the moment.
Peter Orner
#15. I always say writing fiction isn't something you teach. It's something you do, and only experimentation - i.e. doing it, either badly or good sometimes - can help anybody get any better or worse at it.
Peter Orner
#16. That's it. I'm asking you, I'm really asking you - how is it possible that we aren't in a permanent state of mourning?
Peter Orner
#17. I think what I'm after, a lot of the time, is just honesty. What accounts for the fact that the stories we tell ourselves - the story we carry around and think of most often - are the dark ones? Maybe we have to wander around in the darkness to understand it?
Peter Orner
#18. I revise and revise and revise. I'm not even sure "revise" is the right word. I work a story almost to death before it's done.
Peter Orner
#19. I used to be surprised and a little annoyed when characters would reappear in my mind, itching to be in another story. Now I realize it's part of the deal, that you create these people out of thin air but then, if you do it right, they actually live.
Peter Orner
#20. But all of these things now exist. (What? Hogwarts isn't real?)
Gary Hamel
#21. Lot of stories in deceit, how characters deceive other people, but most of all, I think, how they deceive themselves. We're not as tricky as we think we are.
Peter Orner
#22. Actually, you're not famous at all. Maybe you'll get some traction after you're dead?
Peter Orner
#23. I agonize over things like this - the order of things, section titles, all this architectural sort of stuff. Takes me years to figure out.
Peter Orner
#24. The difference between a short story and a novel is the difference between an inarticulate pang in your heart compared to the tragedy of your whole life.
Peter Orner
#25. The "civilized" man of today ridicules the idolatry of bygone ages, but he does not realize that he is a far worse idolater than the idolaters of the past. In former times, men set up images of various animals and adored them; today they slaughter those animals and worship their putrefied carcasses.
Arshavir Ter Hovannessian
#26. We are all one. We're not as separate as we oftentimes think.
Alicia Keys
#27. Untilled ground, however rich, will bring forth thistles and thorns; so also the mind of man.
Teresa Of Avila
#28. I think anything we do - eating, walking down the street, online shopping - gives you another perspective on writing stories.
Peter Orner
#30. I've spent a lot of time in prisons, first doing legal work and later, teaching.
Peter Orner
#31. My characters tend to be people who are looking back on a life lived, their joys, their regrets.
Peter Orner
#32. I've spent so many years living in one place and imaging another.
Peter Orner
