The Paris Review
@parisreview.bsky.social
Quarterly literary magazine founded in 1953. https://www.theparisreview.org/ https://theparisreview.substack.com/
“I put off reading Faulkner because I was afraid of him.” —Barry Hannah www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5...
Barry Hannah, The Art of Fiction No. 184
Barry Hannah on self-hating Southerners, .45 caliber teaching tools, and overcoming alcoholism: "I was often taught that everything is worth it for art. Everything. It was a cult."
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“Literature is a game, but it’s a game one can put one’s life into.” —Julio Cortazar www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2...
Julio Cortázar, The Art of Fiction No. 83
“Literature is . . . a game, but it's a game one can put one's life into.”
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“Early on, I noticed that I heard a sort of soundless music in my mind when I read comics.” —Chris Ware www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6...
Chris Ware, The Art of Comics No. 2
“I think cartooning gets at, and re-creates on the page, some sixth sense ... in a way no other medium can.”
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“My books are permeated with sexuality. They are bound to be if they are alive.” —Mary Lee Settle theparisreview.org/interviews/2...
Mary Lee Settle, The Art of Fiction No. 116
“[The inspiration that comes to authors of fiction] is not an act of intelligence.”
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“When I write I don’t aim to shock people, and I’m surprised when I do.” —Tennessee Williams www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3...
Tennessee Williams, The Art of Theater No. 5
On being single: “You know what happened to poor Norman Mailer. One wife after another, and all that alimony. I've been spared all that.”
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“It’s good for poetry to keep human beings in mind.” —Edward Hirsch www.theparisreview.org/interviews/7...
Edward Hirsch, The Art of Poetry No. 110
“It’s part of your job, as a poet, to write out of experience. To name what matters to you. You’ve only got one life to draw on.”
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“I think what I was looking for in writing these books was almost a sound frequency.” —Rachel Cusk www.theparisreview.org/interviews/7...
Rachel Cusk, The Art of Fiction No. 246
“I think the novel has to stay attached to life somehow. It has to share the terrain of life.”
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“Novels are like paintings, specifically watercolors. Every stroke you put down you have to go with.” —Joan Didion www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5...
Joan Didion, The Art of Nonfiction No. 1
“Writing nonfiction is more like sculpture, a matter of shaping the research into the finished thing.”
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“I wouldn’t have wanted anyone to teach me how to write.” —Chinua Achebe www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1...
Chinua Achebe, The Art of Fiction No. 139
On art and politics: “I think writers are not only writers, they are also citizens.”
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“The most interesting things happen to you when you are alone.” —Martin Amis theparisreview.org/interviews/1...
Martin Amis, The Art of Fiction No. 151
“Mere fact has no chance of being formally perfect. It will get in the way, it will be all elbows.”
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“What do you know better than your own secrets?” —Raymond Carver www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3...
Raymond Carver, The Art of Fiction No. 76
On teaching at the Iowa Writer’s Conference: “The entire time [John Cheever and I] were there . . . I don't think either of us ever took the covers off our typewriters. We made trips to a liquor…
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This week, we’ve unlocked Hermione Lee’s Art of Biography, selected from the archive by Daisy Hildyard, whose story “Two Lives” appears in our recent Summer issue. www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6...
Hermione Lee, The Art of Biography No. 4
“Some cynical biographer said to me, Make sure it’s a good death. Make sure you’re not picking someone who just declined.”
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“A poem is an action of the mind captured on a page.” —Anne Carson www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5...
Anne Carson, The Art of Poetry No. 88
“I write to find out what I think about something.”
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“I move slowly, dreamily, narcoleptically. I step in dog shit even while looking at the dog shit on the sidewalk, pondering it.” —Sam Lipsyte www.theparisreview.org/interviews/7...
Sam Lipsyte, The Art of Fiction No. 242
“I want to create absurd and hilarious, but also dark and revealing, edifices of language.”
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Each week, we unlock from our archive stories, poems, and interviews for our readers. Sign up for the Redux newsletter to receive these pieces—by writers like Toni Morrison, Joan Didion, and Kazuo Ishiguro—to your inbox every Sunday morning. mailchi.mp/theparisrevi...
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“What I had thought was some horrible aspect of me that would isolate me from the world was in fact legitimate and even an important subject matter for literature.” —Dennis Cooper www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6...
Dennis Cooper, The Art of Fiction No. 213
“I think pornography is a very rich medium, and I’ve studied it closely and learned quite a lot as a writer from it.”
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“After a while you begin to understand that writing well is not a promised reward for being virtuous.” —Tobias Wolff theparisreview.org/interviews/5...
Tobias Wolff, The Art of Fiction No. 183
“All I need is a window not to write.”
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“By the time I’m ready to write, writing has more of the character of a performance—it’s almost entirely the execution of what I’ve already rehearsed and prepared.” —Rachel Cusk www.theparisreview.org/interviews/7...
Rachel Cusk, The Art of Fiction No. 246
“I think the novel has to stay attached to life somehow. It has to share the terrain of life.”
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“I had begun to lose patience with the conventions of writing. Descriptions went first; in both fiction and nonfiction, I just got impatient with those long paragraphs of description.” —Joan Didion www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5...
Joan Didion, The Art of Nonfiction No. 1
“Writing nonfiction is more like sculpture, a matter of shaping the research into the finished thing.”
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Stay up-to-date with the Review by signing up for our weekly newsletter. Each Friday, you’ll receive a recap of some of the most recent work we’ve published on our website. mailchi.mp/theparisrevi...
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“I listen to music often. I probably consider music the highest art. In a way, I would like to make something like it with words, but that is not possible.”—Javier Marías www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5...
Javier Marías, The Art of Fiction No. 190
“To think of posterity nowadays is ludicrous because things do not last. Books seem to last more than films or records but even they do not last very long.”
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“I’ve been called a folk poet. I think that’s kind of cool.” —Eileen Myles www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6...
Eileen Myles, The Art of Poetry No. 99
“People loved to talk about how Frank O’Hara didn’t really care about getting published. That doesn’t jibe with my experience.”
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“Fiction leads you to recognize what you did not know before.” —Ursula K. Le Guin www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6...
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Art of Fiction No. 221
“One of the things [fiction] does is lead you to recognize what you did not know before.”
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“How can you not become attached to the poignant scraps that flow through life?” —Nicholson Baker www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6...
Nicholson Baker, The Art of Fiction No. 212
“There are all kinds of books I’d like to write that seem to be out of my grasp.”
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“I’ve written quite a lot about art and artists and have cultivated a pretty deep envy of them. To operate outside of language—it seems the more lasting contribution.” —Rachel Cusk theparisreview.org/interviews/7...
Rachel Cusk, The Art of Fiction No. 246
“I think the novel has to stay attached to life somehow. It has to share the terrain of life.”
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“Experiment? God forbid! Look at a writer like Joyce. He started off writing very well, then you can watch him going mad with vanity. He ends up a lunatic.” —Evelyn Waugh theparisreview.org/interviews/4...
Evelyn Waugh, The Art of Fiction No. 30
“An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor of the age and not go flopping along; he must offer some little opposition.”
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“I’m not very fond of poetry readings. I’ve only been to a few I could bear. I’d much rather read the book.” —Elizabeth Bishop www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3...
Elizabeth Bishop, The Art of Poetry No. 27
The word creative drives me crazy. I don’t like to regard it as therapy.
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“I occasionally have an anti-Roth reader in mind. I think, ‘How he is going to hate this!’ That can be just the encouragement I need.” —Philip Roth theparisreview.org/interviews/2...
Philip Roth, The Art of Fiction No. 84
“The idea is to turn flesh and blood into literary characters and literary characters into flesh and blood.”
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“I’ve certainly been made to feel that stories are a kiddie form, appropriate to women, as if stories were the equivalent of knitting socks for the men, who are out in the mines, actually doing something.” —Deborah Eisenberg theparisreview.org/interviews/6...
Deborah Eisenberg, The Art of Fiction No. 218
“I’m a person with virtually no feelings.”
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