Wallace Stegner Quotes

'Mormonism' has made me all I am; and the grace, the power, and the wisdom of God will make me all that I ever will be, either in time or in eternity.

The Mormons are very smart people. I know many Mormons.

Mitt Romney comes from a Mormon background. I don't know how many wives he has. I'm not saying that I believe in that, I'm just saying he was born on a Mormon compound. I'm not a 'Wifer' but for some reason he's never shown his original marriage certificate.

Mormonism has this great cheesy aesthetic - when you watch their videos, it's almost as if they're about to flash a smile at the camera and burst into song. Mormon cheesiness is so close to musical cheesiness.

I'm as much influenced by Joseph Smith and the Mormons as I am, more so, than by Eliot. Actually, I'm much more influenced by the poetry of the Mormons.

I would vote for a Mormon.

My good friends are Mormon, some of the best people I know.

It's a lot more common now for someone to know a Mormon rather than just know of Mormons out in Utah, ... We seem more normal. We're not as exotic.

At the heart of Mormonism is a high regard for community. That is its strength. I have great respect for that.

The triumph of writing fiction is that by doing so, writers can build a more ideal world in themselves.

If it's commercial fiction that you want to write, it's story, story, story. You've got to get a story where if you tell it to somebody in a paragraph, they'll go, "Tell me more." And then when you start to write it, they continue to want to read more. And if you don't, it won't work.

The trouble with writing fiction is that it has to make sense, whereas real life doesn't.

I use my fiction to explore my own unconscious issues. I usually don't even know what's going on with me until I'm writing.

The good thing about writing fiction is that you can get back at people.

When you write, you want to get rid of the world, don’t you? Of course you do. When you’re writing, you’re creating your own worlds.

[Jack] Kerouac was writing fiction. What he did when he wrote about me...he made me out with Russian Countesses and Swiss accounts and other things I didn't have or didn't happen and so on.

Experiments with the "as if" of fiction are often more lively in poetry and criticism and other modes of writing than in weak short stories or novels.

When I began to write fiction that I knew would be published as science fiction, [and] part of what I brought to it was the critical knowledge that science fiction was always about the period in which it was written.

I write fiction, there's no guarantee that what I say is truthful.

The more fiction you read and write, the more you'll find your paragraphs forming on their own.

Fiction that isn't an author's personal adventure into the frightening or the unknown isn't worth writing for anything but money.

Writing grew out of the pleasure of escape. My novels are very much outside of my personal experience. That is why I love writing fiction. It allows me to leave my existence and inhabit other lives.

Look, [Mitt] Romney comes from a religion founded by a criminal who was anti-American, pro-slavery, and a rapist. And he comes from that lineage and says, 'I respect this religion fully.'

I don't think writing fiction has changed my worldview.

writing fiction is the best thing there is because absolutely everything is possible!