Annie Proulx Quotes

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• You know, one of the tragedies of real life is that there is no background music.

  Annie Proulx

  Real, Tragedy, Life Is

  Annie Proulx (2008). “The Shipping News: A Novel”, p.93, Simon and Schuster

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• You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.

  Annie Proulx

  Teacher, Reading, Writing

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• We face up to awful things because we can't go around them, or forget them. The sooner you get it over with, the sooner you say 'Yes, it happened, and there's nothing I can do about it,' the sooner you can get on with your own life. You've got children to bring up. So you've got to get over it. What we have to get over, somehow we do. Even the worst things.

  Annie Proulx

  Life, Children, Acceptance

  "The Shipping News". Book by Annie Proulx, 1993.

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• What I find to be very bad advice is the snappy little sentence, 'Write what you know.' It is the most tiresome and stupid advice that could possibly be given. If we write simply about what we know we never grow. We don't develop any facility for languages, or an interest in others, or a desire to travel and explore and face experience head-on. We just coil tighter and tighter into our boring little selves. What one should write about is what interests one.

  Annie Proulx

  Stupid, Writing, Self

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• Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.

  Annie Proulx

  Teacher, Reading, Writing

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• Walking on the land or digging in the fine soil I am intensely aware that time quivers slightly, changes occurring in imperceptible and minute ways, accumulating so subtly that they seem not to exist. Yet the tiny shifts in everything--cell replication, the rain of dust motes, lengthening hair, wind-pushed rocks--press inexorably on and on.

  Annie Proulx

  Rain, Hair, Rocks

  Annie Proulx (2011). “Bird Cloud: A Memoir of Place”, p.190, Simon and Schuster

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• If you get the landscape right, the characters will step out of it, and they'll be in the right place.

  Annie Proulx

  Writing, Character, Landscape

  1993 Time, 29 Nov.

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• Anyway, there's something wrong with everybody and it's up to you to know what you can handle.

  Annie Proulx

  Up To You, Handle, Knows

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• I think it's important to leave spaces in a story for readers to fill in from their own experience.

  Annie Proulx

  Writing, Thinking, Space

  "Annie Proulx regrets writing Brokeback Mountain? She needs to let it go" by Ryan Gilbey, www.theguardian.com. December 29, 2014.

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• We're all strange inside. We learn how to disguise our differences as we grow up.

  Annie Proulx

  Growing Up, Differences, Strange

  Annie Proulx (1996). “The Shipping news”

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• What we fear we often rage against.

  Annie Proulx

  Rage

  Annie Proulx (2008). “The Shipping News: A Novel”, p.83, Simon and Schuster

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• Develop craftsmanship through years of wide reading.

  Annie Proulx

  Reading, Years, Wide

  "Ten rules for writing fiction". www.theguardian.com. February 19, 2010.

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• It is my feeling that a story is not finished until it is read, and that the reader finishes it through his or her life experience, prejudices, worldview and thoughts.

  Annie Proulx

  Views, Feelings, Prejudice

  "Close Range". Interview with Matthew Testa, www.cityweekly.net. June 11, 2007.

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• I wish I knew how to quit you.

  Annie Proulx

  Movie, Romantic, Real Love

  Annie Proulx (2005). “Brokeback Mountain”, p.42, Simon and Schuster

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• And I think that's important, to know how the water's gone over the dam before you start to describe it. It helps to have been over the dam yourself.

  Annie Proulx

  Adversity, Thinking, Water

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• And it may be that love sometimes occurs without pain or misery.

  Annie Proulx

  Pain, May, Misery

  Annie Proulx (2008). “The Shipping News: A Novel”, p.337, Simon and Schuster

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• ... there are four women in every man’s heart. The Maid in the Meadow, the Demon Lover, the Stouthearted Woman, the Tall and Quiet Woman.

  Annie Proulx

  Heart, Men, Maids

  Annie Proulx (2008). “The Shipping News: A Novel”, p.171, Simon and Schuster

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• Everybody that went away suffered a broken heart. "I'm coming back some day," they all wrote. But never did. The old life was too small to fit anymore.

  Annie Proulx

  Heart, Broken, Fit

  Annie Proulx (1994). “The Shipping News”, p.313, Simon and Schuster

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• It takes a year, nephew... a full turn of the calendar, to get over losing someone.

  Annie Proulx

  Years, Losing Someone, Nephew

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• Was love then like a bag of assorted sweets passed around from which one might choose more than once? Some might sting the tongue, some invoke night perfume. Some had centers as bitter as gall, some blended honey and poison, some were quickly swallowed. And among the common bull's-eyes and peppermints a few rare ones; one or two with deadly needles at the heart, another that brought clam and gentle pleasure. Were his fingers closing on that one?

  Annie Proulx

  Sweet, Heart, Eye

  Annie Proulx (1994). “The Shipping News”, p.315, Simon and Schuster

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• Ordinary parties, he thought, were subtle games of sexual and social badminton.

  Annie Proulx

  Party, Games, Ordinary

  Annie Proulx (1994). “The Shipping News”, p.254, Simon and Schuster

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• I find it satisfying and intellectually stimulating to work with the intensity, brevity, balance and word play of the short story.

  Annie Proulx

  Hair, Play, Balance

  "Exclusive PJH Interview: At close range with Annie Proulx". Interview with Matthew Testa, planetjh.com. December 7, 2005.

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• In a rough way the short story writer is to the novelist as a cabinetmaker is to a house carpenter.

  Annie Proulx

  House, Insightful, Story Writers

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• All the travelin I ever done is going around the coffeepot looking for the handle.

  Annie Proulx

  Done, Handle

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• I didn't have a chance to buy you anything," she said, then held both closed hands toward him. Uncurled her fingers. In each cupped palm a brown egg. He took them. They were cold. He thought it a tender, wonderful thing to do. She had given him something, the eggs, after all, only a symbol, but they had come from her hands as a gift. To him. It didn't matter that he'd bought them himself at the supermarket the day before. He imagined she understood him, that she had to love him to know that it was the outstreched hands, the giving, that mattered.

  Annie Proulx

  Hands, Eggs, Giving

  "The Shipping News". Book by Annie Proulx, 1993.

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