Michael Chabon Quotes

Historians are the consummate hairdressers of the literary world: cooing in public, catty in private.

Then I found books that were written much later, as late as 15 years ago. It was very superficial material, but enough to tell me that the genesis of this story was worth exploring.

Nonfiction that uses novelistic devices and strategies to shape the work. That's material that I really like.

When I got a little older, I started writing for the high school newspaper, 'The Maroon Wave,' and that's when I fell in love with journalism.

To be a good researcher is to be a good detective, and I enjoy ferreting out tidbits of information. For a diary book like 'A Coal Miner's Bride,' newspapers come in handy for small everyday details such as weather reports.

My research process doesn't vary much. I do a little reading to establish a timeline and decide how I'm going to approach the story.

Literature is the denunciation of the times in which one lives.

There's nothing quite as exciting or moving as the very finest literary non-fiction.

I started as a journalist for magazines in New York City, so it was always storytelling. And moving into movies was a natural transition.

Creative non-fiction is such a liberating genre because it allows the non-fiction writer, whether he or she be journalist or essayist, to use all of the techniques of the fiction writer and all of the ideas, creative approaches, that fiction writers get a chance to use, but they have to use it in a true story.

When I'm not writing, I do a lot of research reading on the shape of civilization. Fiction can be a lot of different things... but I feel like it's my job to write about the way things are.

I love Gene Weingarten's feature writing with the passion of a thousand suns.

Historical fiction is simply fiction set in the past, and should be judged as such.

The field of the novel is very rich. If you're a composer, you're well aware of the history of composition, and you are trying to make your music part of that history. You're not ahistorical. In the same way, I think, if you write now, you are writing in the historical context of what the novel has been and what possibilities it has revealed.

Nursery rhymes were political when they were first written! To me, that's what it's about: it's about using it to say something more than just what the story is.

Every writer dreams of having the ability to hold forth for 8,000 words and pull all these different forms together: history, reportage, journalism. That was all I really wanted, and 'The Atlantic' was my first high-profile opportunity.

I think the mix of narrative and analysis that the 'New Yorker' requires is a perfect expression of what my parents each gave me.

Christopher Hitchens's autobiography, 'Hitch 22', is a poignant read and very interesting because I have a very poor knowledge of recent political history - or, for that matter, distant political history.

I don't think that books are wondrous, magical things that come from nowhere. It's important that a book has clues about where and how it was written.

My favourite writers are columnists.

I am a writer who happens to use some tools of journalism.

Despite the volatile mixture of family, politics and past misdeeds darkening the present, 'Hardball' doesn't have the sharp tang of the early novels or the expansive reach of more recent series installments.

Why shouldn't poetry address what happened yesterday and be published in the newspaper?

In my mind, I still think - and wish - that I'm going to be a journalist or a writer. That's been my dream job my entire life.

for me the novel is a social vehicle, it reflects society.