Gallant
Gallant
notebook writing way
I believed that if I was to call myself a writer, I should live on writing. If I could not live on it, even simply, I should destroy every scrap, every trace, every notebook and live some other way.
real sadness people
No one is as real to me as people in the novel. It grows like a living thing. When I realize they do not exist except in my mind I have a feeling of sadness, looking around for them, as if the half-empty cafe were a place I had once come to with friends who had all moved away.
memories appeals
... appeals to memory were never perfectly answered.
father blessed blood
[My father] had spent his own short time like a priest in charge of a relic, forever expecting the blessed blood to liquefy.
book reading waiting
There is something I keep wanting to say about reading short stories. I am doing it now, because I many never have another occasion. Stories are not chapters of novels. They should not be read one after another, as if they were meant to follow along. Read one. Shut the book. Read something else. Come back later. Stories can wait.
children believe writing
I still do not know what impels anyone sound of mind to leave dry land and spend a lifetime describing people who do not exist. If it is child's play, an extension of make believe - something one is frequently assured by people who write about writing - how to account for the overriding wish to do that, just that, only that, and consider it as rational an occupation as riding a bicycle over the Alps?
stories looks window
A short story is what you see when you look out of the window.
distance aging term
Success can only be measured in terms of distance traveled...
forever rest-of-your-life might
Decide what the rest of your life is to be. Whatever you are now, you might be forever.
writing affair love-affair
Writing is like a love affair: the beginning is the best part.
art life-and-death sculpture
Like every other form of art, literature is no more and nothing less than a matter of life and death. The only question worth asking about a story — or a poem, or a piece of sculpture, or a new concert hall — is, Is it dead or alive?
interesting fascination life-is
All lives are interesting; no one life is more interesting than another. Its fascination depends on how much is revealed, and in what manner.
jobs writing eight
I wanted to live in Paris and write nothing but fiction and be perfectly free. I had decided all this had to be settled by the time I was thirty, and so I gave up my job and moved to Paris at twenty-eight. I just held my breath and jumped. I didn’t even look to see if there was water in the pool.
game physical playoff team
In my mind, Calgary is the most physical team in the NHL. They play a playoff game every night.