Julie Orringer is the real thing, a breathtaking chronicler of the secrets and cruelties underneath the surface of middle-class American life. These are terrific stories-wise, compassionate and haunting.
Writing a short story is a little like walking into a dark room, finding a light and turning it on. The light is the end of the story.
Maybe it’s because I grew up during the MTV generation, but to me a perfect song is one I can imagine a music video to, a song that can take you into a dream.
It is not like a premonition of death. It is as if she died a long time ago, and she just now remembered it.
At a certain point, you must be able to slip loose. At a certain point, you found that you had been set free. You could be anyone, he thought. You could be anyone.
It’s not like it ruined my life, I was going to say, but then I didn’t. Because it occurred to me that maybe it had ruined my life, in a kind of quiet way – a little lie, probably not so vital, insidiously separating me from everyone I loved.
In the end, there probably isn’t much difference between being in love and acting like you’re in love.
You can go on like this for a very long time, and no one will notice. You keep thinking you’re going to hit some sort of bottom, but I’m here to tell you: There is no bottom.
I know a lot of people don’t listen to music when they’re writing because it distracts them, but for me it’s almost a way to get into the self-hypnotic state that I need to be in to write.
There are so many people we could become, and we leave such a trail of bodies through our teens and twenties that it’s hard to tell which one is us. How many versions do we abandon over the years?
So this was what it felt like to lose yourself. Again. To let go of your future and let it rise up and up until finally you couldn’t see it anymore, and you knew that you had to start over.
It had occurred to him that if the undead don’t realize that they are dead, he might easily be one of them himself.
You can recognize in your own reading habits what writers are doing that works and what doesn’t. I’m becoming much more aware of that after reading a decade of student stories.
Even when our death is imminent, we carry the image of ourselves moving forward, alive, into the future.
A conclusion is simply the place where you got tired of thinking.
Plot and scene are still the hardest things for me, though I think they’re the building blocks of what makes a story work.
I have long admired Caroline Leavitt’s probing insight into people, her wit and compassion, her ability to find humor in dark situations, and conversely, her tenderness towards characters.
The thing that grounds you, and the thing that really gives you a sense of wholeness, is your family, friends and your community. Those are the things that can mirror back to you what you’re experiencing, and can affirm to you that the stories you are telling are true.
People write fiction in their minds all the time – every time we read a ‘human interest’ news story, or a true crime tale, we find ourselves fascinated because we’re trying to understand why people behave the way they do, why they make the choices they do, how we become who we become.
The kind of person I find myself interested in is a cross between being very emotionally complex and very immature. That’s what I felt I was like when I was younger.