Robert B. Parker Quotes

The function of the novel is the exploration of the human condition. Really, that's what it's all about.

When you're reading a novel, I think the reason you care about how any given plot turns out is that you take it as a data point in the big story of how the world works. Does such-and-such a kind of guy get the girl in the end? Does adultery ever bring happiness? How do winners become winners?

The MFA program did one great thing for me: It taught me how to be a better reader and critic. Nothing I wrote during my time at Columbia remains - but learning how to really deconstruct a work of fiction - that, of course, is a permanent part of me now.

And the biggest improvement I see between 'Up in the Air' and 'Juno' and 'Thank You for Smoking' is that 'Up in the Air' deals with the complicated human stuff in a way that my other films have not. It's a more articulated film, and because of that, I'm most proud of it.

A man's character never changes radically from youth to old age. What happens is that circumstances bring out characteristics which have not been obvious to the superficial observer.

Reading 'Moby-Dick' helps you discover how to live.

Only a reader can become a writer. Develop a lively intellect and the ability to become interested in anything, no matter how mundane it might seem at first. Look for the story. Develop an eye for detail. Feed your mind and your brain: learn as much as you can about everything you can.

Read, read, read. Read good books. You will strengthen your understanding of story. Your vocabulary will be the richer for it.

I wanted to write as well as I possibly could to deal with life-and-death problems in contemporary society. And the form of Wilkie Collins and Graham Greene, of Hammett and Chandler, seemed to offer me all the rope I would ever need.

When you look at 'Grapes of Wrath,' the weakest moments are those in which Steinbeck is spouting a political idea directly at the reader. The book's real power comes from its slower, broader movement.

If a film isn't really talking about who we are and what our psychologies are, then we're probably not that interested in it, actually.

I think writing and reading are completely synergistic; not necessarily in that one has to be a good reader to be a good writer or vice versa, but that they so inform each other.

What I realized is that my interest in literature has more deeply structured my practice than I thought.

The fact that I had spent so many years doing media criticism and thinking really seriously about theme and structure did definitely help. Doing that for several years indirectly built a lot of tools that I would end up using when writing my own fiction.

I really think that reading is just as important as writing when you're trying to be a writer because it's the only apprenticeship we have, it's the only way of learning how to write a story.

The 21st chapter gives the novel the quality of genuine fiction, an art founded on the principle that human beings change. ----- "A Clockwork Orange Resucked" intro to first full American version 1986

The reason literacy is important is that literature is the operating instructions. The best manual we have. The most useful guide to the country we're visiting, life.

The education of life perfects the thinking mind, but depraves the frivolous.

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 love Victorian novels, the way they capture the nuances of the human condition.

The book says, 'Vanity Fair - a story without a hero.' Becky is effectively the protagonist, the hero we follow. But she is flawed. Becky is a subject of her own time.

Can fiction teach us? Absolutely. Fiction has the power to illustrate place, era, and atmosphere in vivid detail. But it is not Anthropology for Dummies.

I was reading some Raymond Carver. I really liked how he did that 'slice of life' thing. Because I'm not much of a reader I end up finding out about these things a long time after other people.

I like Halldor Laxness and Machado de Assis - people who try to understand the human condition by looking at intimate pictures of human life.

I look to find the heart and soul of people, of my characters. I look for the truth of them and the truths about life that are presented through them.