#OpenBooks
#OpenBooks is a social media series of quotes taken from in-person talks from writers who have visited Columbia, South Carolina, primarily during The Open Book reading series. See all the quotes from the #OpenBooks series below.
Jonathan Franzen
“I don’t trust politics. You think you’re entirely right and they’re entirely wrong. That’s the wrong headspace for a writer.”
“Deep political certainty isn’t the best place to be for writers.”
Author of Purity.
Hernan Diaz
“I don’t want to be on the page. If I see my fingerprints on the page, I get disappointed.
“We need to get rid of the word ‘research.’ What (fiction writers) do is not guided by science. It’s serendipity. There’s a great word we have to capture our process. It’s called ‘reading.’”
Author of Trust.
Anthony Doerr
(On writing a novel) “You’re knitting together a dream, and you don’t want the reader to wake up.”
“I want to alienate the fewest readers possible.”
Author of All The Light We Cannot See.
Claudia Rankine
“I try to make the surface transparent because at any moment the reader might stop and try to figure stuff out.”
Author of Citizen.
George Saunders
“When revising, you’re recognizing the million people inside you. Let each person take a turn to revise. Eventually, your work will find a steady state, and that person will be better than you.”
Author of Tenth of December.
Dave Eggers
“Think seriously about physical limitations. Get over yourself. You aren’t above them.”
Author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.
Lauren Groff
“There will be times you try to write a book and you won’t be wise enough to write it. And that’s okay.”
(On making time to write) “I built a cathedral around my time.”
Author of Matrix.
Chang-Rae Lee
“Write about what’s real to you. It’s harder than it looks.”
“Don’t hope when you write. That leads to a lot of bullshit.”
Author of On Such a Full Sea.
Kate Christensen
“The less ego I have when I’m with my work, the better.”
“If you’re offered money to write something, say yes.”
Author of The Great Man.
David Mitchell
“A short story is skin-hugging Lycra. It’s a pair of cyclist shorts—nothing left to the imagination. A novel is cargo pants. They’re supposed to be messy.”
“When you’re stuck, write a letter to yourself about why you’re stuck. You might become unstuck.”
Author of Cloud Atlas.
Karen Joy Fowler
“Never let someone talk you into a change you don’t think is right. Never change something unless you know, clearly, how and why it’s making the book better.
“I spend a lot of time thinking about what information to conceal from readers.”
Author of The Jane Austen Book Club and We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves.
Maria Semple
“A novel screams out your personal taste. You need to have good taste to write a novel.”
Author of Where’d You Go, Bernadette?
Colson WHitehead
“When I became a parent, I became nicer to my characters.”
Author of The Underground Railroad.
Paul Auster
“I can’t think with my fingers in a typing position, but I can while writing freehand, with my fingers digging into the page.
(On criticism) “The punches are the things you remember, not the hugs or the pats on the back. It’s a terrible thing to be judged by strangers.”
“I think of the paragraph in the novel as the equivalent of a line in poetry. The paragraph is the musical composition that the sentence isn’t. You can’t tell what kind of music a writer is making from a sentence.”
Author of The Book of Illusions.
Nuruddin Farah
“It’s important to think about, continuously, whether you want to be the master of the story, or whether you want the story to be the master of you.”
“Literature is a lake into which everyone adds a drop. Think of yourselves as humble craftspersons who aim to add a drop to that enormous lake.”
Author of Crossbones.
Teju Cole
“As creative people, we cannot let the culture at large badger us into weakness. We must go to uncomfortable places.”
“No one is more intense than me.”
Author of Open City.
Mary Szybist
“Poetry should undertake the preservation of otherness.”
Author of Incarnadine.