Darin Strauss

Faith is a private issue. At least, I consider it to be one. ”

It's good training for a novelist to try to discern the truth about a place after only a few glimpses of it. ”

My training and my inclination is to invent. ”

Regret doesn't budge things; it seems crazy that the force of all that human want can't amend a moment, can't even stir a pebble. ”

I got a job writing for a financial technology newsletter in Manhattan. I didn't even understand what I was writing about. The newsletter had, like, 2,000 subscribers, and it was $700 a year for a subscription. ”

It's a very performative thing, grief. As with so much in modern life, I think there's a whole performative layer to what we do because we feel like there's a private TV show viewing our lives. ”

I thought, 'I'll come back to New York. I worked for the 'Aspen Times' when I lived in Aspen. I'll work for the 'New York Times' when I live in New York.' It didn't work out that way. ”

You can work really hard and well on something, and someone you respect might hate it; worse, they're not empirically wrong for doing so. This is scary, especially for people who haven't been published. ”

V. S. Pritchett was one of the most admired, fun, talked-about writers of the 20th century: he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth for his work with prose. He was born in 1900, wrote till he died in 1997, and has been tidily forgotten ever since. This is a real shame. ”

I guess when you write a personal story, people feel compelled to share their own stories. ”