Latest Pam Houston Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• When a book is in its final stages, I've just got to be home, looking at it seventeen hours a day, and that's fine. But all that initial creation of the early drafts, I'd just as soon write it on the road in any extreme place. That's sort of ideal.

  Pam Houston

  Book, Home, Writing

  Source: therumpus.net

• I always think, when I'm in motion, writing seems like the most natural thing.

  Pam Houston

  Writing, Thinking, Natural

  Source: therumpus.net

• There's this great Ron Carlson story, "A Note on the Type," and it's about this guy who keeps escaping from prison. He's really good at escaping, but he gets caught all the time, because he can't stop writing his name on underpasses where he's running from the law. And there's this whole beautiful paragraph about how to run is to write. And, you know, it's obviously about the writer's life.

  Pam Houston

  Beautiful, Running, Writing

  Source: therumpus.net

• I write well on the road. I have the energy, I have the motivation to write. I'm happy when I'm on the road.

  Pam Houston

  Motivation, Writing, Energy

  Source: therumpus.net

• I was in Mongolia, pretty extreme situations. We were sick with dysentery, we were sick with bronchitis. I had been bitten by a dog for the first time in my life and my whole hand was black, and there was no way to even think of getting a rabies shot without driving for five days, and then you wouldn't have wanted that needle in your skin anyway. And I had my period. Everything was wrong at one time. Like, I couldn't have been more uncomfortable. And I stayed up - it was too cold to sleep.

  Pam Houston

  Dog, Sleep, Thinking

  Source: therumpus.net

• It would have been so perfectly ironic if I had been killed by the dog, because I was petting a dog who was not used to being pet, because I think I'm some kind of dog whisperer, and I think I can make any dog love me.

  Pam Houston

  Dog, Thinking, Pet

  Source: therumpus.net

• I write really well on the road.

  Pam Houston

  Writing, Wells

  Source: therumpus.net

• My parents were travelers. Every time my parents got ten dollars ahead they went somewhere. That's what they did. So I got the bug from them.

  Pam Houston

  Parent, Dollars, Bugs

  Source: therumpus.net

• Sometimes I'm writing for magazines on assignment, but the university has to be patient with me. I mean, during the ten-week periods that I have a class, I'm there every Thursday night or whatever it is, but sometimes that's all I'm there, because I'm somewhere else the rest of the time.

  Pam Houston

  Writing, Mean, Night

  Source: therumpus.net

• I love the Bahamas, and I used to go there all the time with my friend who passed away, Henry. And I love it there, especially that island [Grand Exuma], so I've been there a lot over the twenty years.

  Pam Houston

  Islands, Years, Twenties

  Source: therumpus.net

• Traveling is my priority, because it drives the writing, so I teach around the travel, and sometimes the travel is the teaching.

  Pam Houston

  Teaching, Writing, Priorities

  Source: therumpus.net

• I've always traveled. I'm a professor in a limited way. I teach one class two quarters out of four, so I get traveling done.

  Pam Houston

  Class, Two, Done

  Source: therumpus.net

• I'm always out looking for weird, beautiful things.

  Pam Houston

  Beautiful, Beautiful Things

  Source: therumpus.net

• Every day at about four o'clock, I would go up to a farmhouse - or whatever kind of house was around - and knock on the door and say, "Hi, I'm biking across Canada, and I'm wondering if I could pitch my tent on your land." And sometimes people slammed the door in my face, but the vast majority of the time they said, "Of course," and then they said, "Come for dinner," and then they packed me food the next day and fed me breakfast and sometimes they got out the bottle of wine they'd been saving for a special occasion.

  Pam Houston

  Wine, Next Day, Doors

  Source: therumpus.net

• When I was a little kid, I used to walk miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles of railroad tracks.

  Pam Houston

  Kids, Track, Railroads

  Source: therumpus.net

• Being in the presence of the "other" seems to show me who I am in a way that is really important to me. I feel radically more comfortable in Laos, say, than I do in Pennsylvania.

  Pam Houston

  Who I Am, Important, Pennsylvania

  Source: therumpus.net

• Stillness is a harder concept for me than ecstasy, but I can imagine it best when I am fully present and paying strict attention to a place I am moving through.

  Pam Houston

  Moving, Attention, Imagine

  Source: therumpus.net

• Give me a labyrinth to walk and I can usually free my mind.

  Pam Houston

  Giving, Mind, Labyrinth

  Source: therumpus.net

• Movement helps keep me centered. I am a disaster, for instance, at sitting meditation, but I'm pretty decent at walking meditation.

  Pam Houston

  Walking Meditation, Sitting, Movement

  Source: therumpus.net

• For me, the shaping of the story is more important than accuracy.

  Pam Houston

  Important, Stories, Accuracy

  Source: therumpus.net

• One thing I'm always thinking about myself is what am I willing to make up? And the answer is not much.

  Pam Houston

  Thinking, Answers, Willing

  Source: therumpus.net

• I'm about going out in the world and noticing stuff, and going home and writing it down, and putting it next to other stuff I've noticed and seeing what happens.

  Pam Houston

  Home, Writing, Going Out

  Source: therumpus.net

• in general, I feel most comfortable between known quantities.

  Pam Houston

  Feels, Quantity, Known

  Source: therumpus.net