Diane Johnson quotes:

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  • Statuettes of drunken sailors, velvet pictures of island maidens, plastic seashell lamps made in Taiwan. What contempt the people who think up souvenirs have for other people.

  • The whole process of writing a novel is having this great, beautiful idea and then spoiling it.

  • A novel's whole pattern is rarely apparent at the outset of writing, or even at the end; that is when the writer finds out what a novel is about, and the job becomes one of understanding and deepening or sharpening what is already written. That is finding the theme.

  • Women have the feeling that since they didn't make the rules, the rules have nothing to do with them.

  • Not having to own a car has made me realize what a waste of time the automobile is.

  • A chaplain's biggest gift is to be present and just listen.

  • ...is this not in fact the purpose of young Americans going abroad? To make them think of things they never thought of?

  • In what we think of as bad dialogue, the characters talk directly to each other.

  • The Novelist, afraid his ideas may be foolish, slyly puts them in the mouth of some other fool and reserves the right to disavow them.

  • But novels are never about what they are about; that is, there is always deeper, or more general, significance. The author may not be aware of this till she is pretty far along with it. A novel's whole pattern is rarely apparent at the outset of writing, or even at the end; that is when the writer finds out what a novel is about, and the job becomes one of understanding and deepening or sharpening what is already written. That is finding the theme.

  • Any essayist setting out on a frail apparatus of notings and jottings is a brave person.

  • But novels are never about what they are about; that is, there is always deeper, or more general, significance. The author may not be aware of this till she is pretty far along with it.

  • Glenda Adams has written a wicked and witty novel.

  • Laughter is the jam on the toast of life. It adds flavor, keeps it from being too dry, and makes it easier to swallow.

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