Daniel Alarcon Quotes

Anything I've ever read by John Irving has been really well written.

I recently read a collection of stories called 'Boondock Kollage,' by Regina Bradley. The stories follow multiple characters through the South, through the past and present. I loved reading that book: the first time I read the opening story, I was breathless and incoherent.

Are You Seeing Me? is written powerfully with both the heart and the head, and neither gives an inch. It's funny, moving and hugely insightful. Darren Groth puts the reader into the heads of Perry and Justine in a way that feels so true and so revealing that I think I've come away with a greater capacity for empathy. I didn't know a book could do that. We all need to spend some time inside this story.

Ian McEwan is a very good writer; the first half of Atonement alone would ensure him a lasting place in English letters.

Here's what I want from a book, what I demand, what I pray for when I take up a novel and begin to read the first sentence: I want everything and nothing less, the full measure of a writer's heart. I want a novel so poetic that I do not have to turn to the standby anthologies of poetry to satisfy that itch for music, for perfection and economy of phrasing, for exactness of tone. Then, too, I want a book so filled with story and character that I read page after page without thinking of food or drink because a writer has possessed me, crazed with an unappeasable thirst to know what happens next.

It can be hard to write a skillfully entertaining fiction, but a great book wants to be more, and wants more from us.

FBI Girl is a gorgeous, sumptuous book. Conlon-McIvor takes a subject (herself and her family) that might have sunk in other hands, beats egg white under her words and the whole thing rises like a dream. It's a love story for her people and for a time and place. Read it.

'The Slap' is not like anything else. It's an incredibly well-written novel that has been turned into a great and intriguing series that reveals both less and more about each character than you learn in the book. It's a novel that has been given a second chance to live.

'TMOK' is about the very interesting journey of a girl in a different situation, and different stories blend into one film. The film has a lot of emotional depth, and I am sure people will like it.

I'm rereading Jenny Offill's 'Dept. of Speculation.' I love it, and she's just a magician. Line by line and paragraph by paragraph, it's mesmerizing and so intricately plotted and so nimble.

I suppose I reached the limit of what I could do with nonfiction books, perhaps because they never felt quite intense enough - it's a journalistic enterprise, ultimately, even if you are using the memoir as a form.

All great books contain boring portions, and all great lives have contained uninteresting stretches.

The character, as written on the page, is just a blueprint for a human being.

A fascinating book and a great pleasure to read: Betool Khedairi is a talented new voice in fiction.

40 Words for Sorrow is brilliant-one of the finest crime novels I've ever read. Giles Blunt writes with uncommon grace, style and compassion and he plots like a demon. This book has it all-unforgettable characters, beautiful language, throat-constricting suspense.

I'm often a little perplexed, when I read a review of a book, by the quotes that are pulled out as evidence of excellent prose. I don't think great novels are necessarily composed of great prose, or that there's a correlation between beautiful prose and the quality of a work of fiction. A really good, interesting novel will often let a little ugliness get into its words - to create a certain effect, to leave the reader with a certain sense of disorientation.

That's one of the reasons I take a lot of consolation in fiction. You have years to work on it. I think that allows you to reach for the best part of your reader instead of a lot of the internet stuff, in which you're kind of reaching for the worst or the most shallow part of your reader.

Many books that you read, they have those disclaimers that say that, "None of the events and none of the people are based on real life" and so on... Well, I don't believe that. I think that as human beings many people touch us, especially people we love the most and we can't help but do character sketches when we go to our art.

I don't think there is a single sentence in this whole book [East of Eden] that does not either develop character, carry on the story or provide necessary background.

Novels are . . . an unsurpassed form to understand people.

For me, the goal is always to write a novel that I myself would like to read. People frequently ask me what my favorite book is, and in effect, there's always a capital-F Favorite, capital-B Book that I would like to write myself someday. I try to go for that ideal of writing the best, most entertaining, most beautifully written book that I possibly can.

Delicious... Everything I'd hoped for in a new Wild Cards book. The character interactions and plot twists have exactly the complexity, surprise, and unsentimental realism I'd expect out of a George R. R. Martin project.

Peter Geye has rendered the Minnesota north shore in all its stark, dangerous beauty, and it is the perfect backdrop for this deeply moving story of conflict and forgiveness. Safe from the Sea is a remarkable debut.

I see this with experienced writers, too: They worry so much about the plot that they lose sight of the characters. They lose sight of why they are telling the story. They don't let the characters actually speak. Characters will start to dictate the story in sometimes surprising, emotional, and funny ways. If the writers are not open to those surprises, they're going to strangle the life, spark, or spirit out of their work.

The endings for all my characters seem sufficiently human and messy for me to feel comfortable with them. In some ways they have only moved an inch, but sometimes an inch is a great distance.