Susan Minot Quotes

#1. Writing chases after the senses, and conveys them in an altered form. When it is done well, the senses come alive in a new and captured form.

Susan Minot

#2. David Gulden captures animals in all their wonder and intrigue, without glorifying or romanticizing them. He knows Kenya's wildlife intimately, and it shows in the depth of his images. He has an artist's eye, which delivers beauty and transport in every picture.

Susan Minot

#3. I don't consider the first-world concerns any less important than the third-world ones.

Susan Minot

#4. 'Monkeys' is made up of nine short stories that tell an overall story. 'Folly' is a series of vignettes all put together to tell a larger story. In 'Lust and Other Stories,' there are nine stories - three, three, three; the beginnings of love, the middles, and the afters.

Susan Minot

#5. I first travelled to Africa at the end of 1996 and was immediately captivated. I had planned on a three-week trip, and I ended up staying two months.

Susan Minot

#6. The teenager's room is her cave. It is here she can meet herself, undistracted by the new hassles life is making for her. Here, she can reflect.

Susan Minot

#7. When I was younger, I suppose I was interested in checking out as much about writing as I could: bad, weird, irritating, even things not-to-my-taste. Now I am less open. I will decide after a few pages if I want to stay in the world of the book, and if I don't, I put it down. I have less time left.

Susan Minot

#8. Minimalism has a connotation of being reductive, and not in the best way. 'Brevetist' is a better term. I'm trying to be as concise as possible and still getting across to the reader. When information is delivered in that way, it is very satisfying to me.

Susan Minot

#9. For a girl, with each boy it's as though a petal gets plucked each time.

Susan Minot

#10. People can have a variety of concerns at the same time. Even those undergoing grave or traumatic experiences will acknowledge the need for lightness or even entertainment.

Susan Minot

#11. I learned that if you love a boy you are o longer free. The boy may become more important than your own self and if it is so, you will find trouble there. The first time you are hurt in your heart, you do not forget the lesson. It stays forever.

Susan Minot

#12. She thought of how much people changed you. It was the opposite of what you always heard, that no one could change a person. It wasn't true. It was only through other people that one ever did change.

Susan Minot

#13. Desire suppressed finds its way into other more surreal settings, into dreams.

Susan Minot

#14. Recording a scene with paint rather than film sinks you more deeply into your surroundings. You have to look a little harder and a little longer. And you end up with a memento.

Susan Minot

#15. Illness can make us behave in the most surprising ways.

Susan Minot

#16. When a person you love moves by you with flat eyes that will not see you, it is a shock to believe it.

Susan Minot

#17. The past was speaking ... what was the difference now? She had the feeling she'd walked into a house she thought she knew well and discovered a room she hadn't seen before. Maybe it wasn't too late. Maybe they did have a chance.

Susan Minot

#18. There are aspects of love that I once undervalued. Kindness. Having a sort of honor when love is on the table.

Susan Minot

#19. Success did change me. You don't want it to, but it does.

Susan Minot

#20. A lot of readers want characters to behave in a responsible way, or they want to understand the characters' dilemma and act, in a way, on their behalf.

Susan Minot

#21. Off the packed trail we experience the miracle of corn snow, skiing atop the crust, like skiing on an eggshell that has been sprinkled with sugar.

Susan Minot

#22. There is no good reason. Don't waste your life waiting for good reasons ... You'll wait and wait.

Susan Minot

#23. A free spirit's just an idiot who doesn't want to face reality.

Susan Minot

#24. When I travel, I always take my Winsor & Newton watercolor kit, which is the size of a pack of cigarettes when folded up. I bought my first one in the 1980s. It was handy to bring on trips, and I packed it into a leather pouch along with a couple of brushes, a pencil, an eraser and paper.

Susan Minot

#25. When I look through my sketchbooks, they bring back moments that I would otherwise have completely forgotten.

Susan Minot

#26. The idea that there is a family somewhere who functions is an odd concept.

Susan Minot

#27. It occurred to her how some people continued through no design of one's own to be in one's life while others might initially enter in a sort of blaze and seem to change everything but then might not stay around.

Susan Minot

#28. Longing, for everyone, is always there, isn't it? More intense at some times than others. You get closer to less longing - an odd metaphoric phrasing, I realize - then, you are further and longing more than ever again.

Susan Minot

#29. When I was in my teens and twenties, I could see friends expressing how radical they were, and I envied them, the way they lived, the way they dressed. Maybe there is a part of me that is reserved, even in rebellion.

Susan Minot

#30. Most fiction comes from your experience.

Susan Minot

#31. I would have fallen in love with you anywhere.

Susan Minot

#32. In general, my own experience of writing an adaptation of 'Evening' gave me a chance to get into different parts of the book.

Susan Minot

#33. Painting keeps me occupied in those moments when travel can be aimless and even disorienting. Mainly it is a way to register at least some of the new impressions of a foreign place, when its thrilling barrage can sometimes overwhelm you.

Susan Minot

#34. I went to graduate school with zero expectation. I kind of backed into it. I wanted to go back to school because I felt gaps in my literary background. I studied mostly twentieth-century English literature in college, so I thought, 'Maybe I'll go back for my writing.'

Susan Minot

#35. Preserving that privacy between a writer and the work is important. You have to shut out all those voices that have reacted to your work.

Susan Minot

#36. I love 'Anna Karenina.' It's in the top five books on my list. Tolstoy is unsurpassed in combining the grand with the trivial, that is, the small details which make up life.

Susan Minot

#37. Writing an adaptation is not so much a collaboration as it is a series of steps. You're basically creating a blueprint for something else.

Susan Minot

#38. Families are endlessly fascinating. We all have one, and they have a great impact on who we are and what we do - Freudian as that is.

Susan Minot

#39. Our concerns aren't always appropriate or morally elevated.

Susan Minot

#40. Recklessness is par for the course when you're 25.

Susan Minot

#41. Change and renewal are themes in life, aren't they? We keep growing throughout life.

Susan Minot

#42. [She] felt as if she were both a stranger to herself and more herself than she'd ever been.

Susan Minot

#43. A struggle, to the person experiencing it, is a struggle.

Susan Minot

#44. So many bad things happen in this world because people don't know how to express things.

Susan Minot

#45. Between children and parents, there is a difficulty of seeing each other simply as people.

Susan Minot

#46. Boy poison - a boy's kisses were like a poison, which infected you and after you were exposed you craved more, like an addict.

Susan Minot