Allan Gurganus
Allan Gurganus
Allan Gurganus is an American novelist, short story writer, and essayist whose work, which includes Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All and Local Souls, is often influenced by and set in his native North Carolina...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth11 June 1947
CountryUnited States of America
deeply emotional extremes human life lives releases remember sensuality sexual shy tumultuous
To shy away from human extremes and human sensuality makes for bone-dry fiction. A world parched of our sexual releases and our tumultuous daily emotional lives is deeply impoverished. It is not lifelike, at least life as I remember living it.
admirer animal desire edge endure great humor life pain people tremendous work
I'm a great admirer of Primo Levi's work. It's always mind-boggling, the idea of how much pain people can endure and still come back from the edge with a sense of humor, with this tremendous animal desire we have to get on with life.
anybody life minute next takes wisdom
I don't think anybody who has any wisdom regrets a minute of their life, as long as it takes you to the next minute, when things get a little better, and even when it doesn't.
great life proved rocky spend town
I was born in Rocky Mount, NC. The town of 24,000 proved a great place to spend the first 17 years of life. But, after that, onward, outward.
body best-things objects
You know, right often, the body is the best thing we’ve got going for us. A body itself is a shiny object. Something!
writing mean current-events
Writing means being a fascinated slave to current events.
pages ears kind
There's a kind of ear music . . . a rhythmic synchronicity which creates a kind of heartbeat on the page.
fall writing shapes
Writing is a kind of free fall that you then go back and edit and shape.
years fifty lasts
Beware of using up your last forty years in being the curator of your first fifty.
believe writing thinking
I think Walt Whitman went to the help wanted section and found a squib that said "Wanted: National Poet." And he was innocent enough to believe there really was such a job. And if he could just write a poem that incorporated everything he felt and suspected and hoped for from America that he would have the position.
different kind knows
You have a different kind of tenderness for everybody you know.
simple shapes littles
Without much accuracy, with strangely little love at all, your family will decide for you exactly who you are, and they'll keep nudging, coaxing, poking you until you've changed into that very simple shape.
people stories sugar
Know something, sugar? Stories only happen to people who can tell them.
fictional grew hardcore needed parental permission public
When I grew up, there were locked cabinets in public libraries. You needed parental permission if you were under eighteen. I was let down by the overblown reputations of some hardcore fictional works.