Gail Godwin
Gail Godwin
Gail Godwinis an American novelist and short story writer. Godwin has written 14 novels, two short story collections, three non-fiction books, and ten libretti. Her primary literary accomplishments are her novels, which have included five best-sellers and three finalists for the National Book Award. Most of her books are realistic fiction novels that follow a character's psychological and intellectual development, often based on themes taken from Godwin's own life...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth18 June 1937
CountryUnited States of America
The act of longing for something will always be more intense than the requiting of it.
The best antidote I have found is to yearn for something. As long as you yearn, you can't congeal: There is a forward motion to yearning.
...Some things...arrive in their own mysterious hour, on their own terms and not yours, to be seized or relinquished forever.
The race of children possesses magically sagacious powers.
At times ... one is downright thankful for the self-absorption of other people.
I work continuously within the shadow of failure. For every novel that makes it to my publisher's desk, there are at least five or six that died on the way. And even with the ones I do finish, I think of all the ways they might have been better.
Much of the activity we think of as writing is, actually, getting ready to write.
Heroics are not easily had for the young in our times. Perhaps that is why they go to such extremes to create their own dangers.
I read constantly. If I don't have a good book, I'm beside myself.
Actors between plays are like ghosts looking for bodies to inhabit.
Something's your vocation if it keeps making more of you.
What did a few ripples in the flesh matter when, all too soon, now or later, that flesh would be making its return journey to dust?
You're supposed to get tired planting bulbs. But it's an agreeable tiredness.
During the act of writing I have told myself something that I didn't know I knew.