Alice McDermott

Alice McDermott
Alice McDermottis an American writer and university professor. For her 1998 novel Charming Billy she won an American Book Award and the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth27 June 1953
CityBrooklyn, NY
CountryUnited States of America
memories echoes gone
The lesson, I suppose, is that none of us have much control over how we will be remembered. Every life is an amalgam, and it is impossible to know what moments, what foibles, what charms will come to define us once we're gone. All we can do is live our lives fully, be authentically ourselves, and trust that the right things about us, the best and most fitting things, will echo in the memories of us that endure.
tools world language
Language is the writer's only tool - we really don't have anything else - but our language contains within it our entire experience of the world.
authors books interior life matters meet publishing sheltered state timeless wonder written
Those of us who know the transporting wonder of a reading life know that it little matters where we are when we talk about books or meet authors or bemoan the state of publishing because when we read, we are always inside, sheltered in that interior room, that clean, well-lighted, timeless place that is the written word.
fiction report task tool tradition writers
Our task as fiction writers isn't just to report something that didn't really happen. We have to give what we write a sense of reality. The tool of our tradition is language.
A tendency to make metaphorical connections is an occupational hazard for those of us who write.
All my friends had grandparents who had accents. I thought all grandparents were supposed to have accents. My friends were all second-generation, as I was.
human list prize time
You're a human being, and every time a list of prize nominations comes out and your name isn't on it, you do have that thumb-in-the-eye feeling.
assumes cliche fiction runs stumbling typical writer
Any fiction writer who assumes that a character is typical no doubt runs the risk of stumbling into cliche and stereotype.
behind certain inside listen
As a writer, you have to put yourself in service to the character, get behind their eyes by delineating the world where the character develops. You have to listen to the character and see him inside his certain world to know what conclusions he would draw.
great information novel pleasure publish rather readers sort suspect taught
Some readers sort of suspect that you have another book that you didn't publish that has even more information in it. I think that readers sort of want to be taught something. They have this idea that there's a takeaway from a novel rather than just the being there, which I think is the great, great pleasure of reading.
almost claim
After a long run of almost thirty years, you get to the point where you say, 'These are my concerns.' It's not so much this is what I set out to claim - it is a kind of refrain.
among anyone faith people ways
I think a misconception among many non-religious people is that anyone with a strong faith is, in all ways and at all times, blindly consistent, unwavering, unquestioning.
call cause dramatist handy life pause rituals understand weddings
I think it's handy for a dramatist of any sort, if I can call myself that, to make use of weddings and wakes, to make use of those moments and those rituals that cause us to pause and look back or look forward and understand that life has changed.
suppose written
My own 'sentimental favorite' is always the novel I haven't yet written - I suppose that's the one I consider my 'masterpiece' as well.