Michelle Dean Quotes

I judged about a zillion awards this year so I've been reading a lot of books that just came out.

In general, fiction is divided into 'literary fiction' and 'commercial fiction.' Nobody can definitively say what separates one from the other, but that doesn't stop everybody (including me) from trying. Your book probably will be perceived as one or the other, and that will affect how it is read, packaged and marketed.

I don't very often read novels.

It's never really easy to be successful as a writer when you're trying to write literary fiction. You've already limited your readership limited by that choice.

When I'm not writing, I read loads of fiction, but I've been writing quite constantly lately so I've been reading a lot of nonfiction - philosophy, religion, science, history, social or cultural studies.

Being a novelist is hard for anyone - male or female. You don't get to quit your day job.

My feeling about my own work is, I could be writing 'The Aeneid' and they would still have to call it chick lit or mommy lit or menopausal old hag lit.

I'm not an enormous proponent of plot as a reader. It's about other things; my reading has become specialized over the years.

Real novelists, those we admire, those we consider timeless in their language and character and scene, those who receive accolades for inventive language and form, have writing lives we imagine in specific ways.

I read many wonderful novels, though I now find the idea of literary fiction obsolete.

I know a bit about selling books, and you need a good title - a catchy concoction with a little Cajun spice, something that will make folks stop in the aisles, turn away from the Grisham novels and the latest crazy diet fad, and pick up your masterpiece.

I prefer a great novel, but many novels come with a bunch of novel-y writerliness that feels sort of macho to me, so I do end up reading lots of shorter things.

I'm not really a mainstream novelist!

One of the nice things about 'The New Yorker' is they let you write stories that sometimes end up almost half a book.

Short stories are not maybe the biggest deal in our culture anymore.

I read all kinds of novels, as long as they're good.

Sometimes my readers ask me what else they should read, and I recommend Sebald.

I will read anything at all by Kate Atkinson, Daniel Woodrell, and William Kennedy, who are all fearless.

I read a lot for me. But I'm not one of those people who gets 'The New York Times' book review and runs out and buys 10 books and is done with them and passing them out to friends, you know, two weeks later.

I'll read anything Anne Carson writes, anything J. M. Coetzee writes, and anything Cormac McCarthy writes. I'll drop whatever I'm doing to read a new Mary Ruefle essay.

No one knows why books do well.

I'm the world's worst at reading reviews and then pretending I've read the book.

I can tell you that when Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, our writer, when she would work on some of these grander novels like, say, a book like 'The Golden Bowl', that would take her months and I wouldn't know what she was doing, really.

I have a novel out, 'Lupus Rex,' that I wrote and am excited about that.

I am a huge fan of Amitav Ghosh's work. I wish I could meet him.