Andre Dubus
Andre Dubus
Andre Jules Dubus IIwas an American short story writer, essayist, and autobiographer...
pain grief soul
After the dead are buried, after the physical pain of grief has become a permanent wound in the soul, then comes the transcendent and common bond of human suffering, and with that comes forgiveness, and with forgiveness comes love.
grief dark thinking
I feel that writers think with their noses to the ground, and the dark stuff kind of comes to me more, even though I really am sort of an upbeat guy. It's an honest descent into darkness. And you can't have the joy without the grief - it's why we listen to Mozart's 'Requiem.'
heart humor writes
Berg writes with humor and a big heart about resilience, loneliness, love, and hope. And the transcendence that redeems.
cannot creates imagination insists millions moment predicting thousands
What creates dispair is the imagination, which insists on predicting millions of moments, thousands of days, and so drains you that you cannot live the moment at hand.
belief element shyness strange truly
Shyness has a strange element of narcissism, a belief that how we look, how we perform, is truly important to other people.
writing opposites grace
Don't outline your stories. A lot of fiction workshops say you should. I say the opposite. I quote Grace Paley: "We write what we don't know we know."
writing thinking discovery
What's so exciting and terrifying about the writing process is that it really is an act of exploration and discovery. With all of us, not just writers, there is a sort of knowledge of the other. We have a lot more in common than we realize, and I think writing is really a sustained act of empathy.
art believe care
I truly believe the art's larger than the artist. Who cares about John Steinbeck? I care about the Joad family.
believe earth too-much
I love the earth too much to contemplate a life apart from it, although I believe in that life.
war writing men
I have always known that writing fiction had little effect on the world; that if it did, young men would not have gone to war after The Iliad.
writing fog years
I'm one of those writers who can't talk about what they're working on. The entire four years I was writing 'House of Sand and Fog,' my wife never saw a word of it. I just have to keep it in the womb, and then everyone can have a crack at it.
bullying writing past
As a young victim of bullying and then, later, a vindictive perpetrator of violence myself, I've known both sides of this experience, and I tried very hard in the writing here to be as absolutely honest as I possibly could, to not romanticize myself or my past actions or cowardly inactions in any way.
stars crazy distance
I've had a lot of glamour come my way in the last 10 years - you know, movie stars and mansions and red carpets and trips to Europe and crazy stuff I never would have imagined - and I look at them as if I'm the bartender in the corner of the room. They've never gone into my psyche. I look at them with distance, and wonder.
land air campaigns
I wonder if politicians know less about the land, now that they campaign by air.