Antonya Nelson

“There are a thousand things to hear about, informationally, daily, but the thing that doesn't go away is the one to pay attention to.”

“Teenagers, especially girl ones, seem like the perfect canary-in-the-coal-mine characters to me. They capture American culture and its perversion, its hypocrisy - how absorbed we are with yo...”

“My father was among the first of his generation to look into writers who've become part of the American lit. canon. When he wrote his master's thesis on William Faulkner in the Forties, he c...”

“I like the way that psychological extremity can illuminate more 'normal' characters by forcing a comparison.”

“I guess the thing I would say most fervently is that your original impulse to write something is an impulse you should trust, and that if it doesn't work on the first draft, which it hardly...”

“The most enduring battle is between head and heart; what would be efficient and logical is nearly always trumped by what is messy and illogical.”

“Empathy is not as complicated when you have some aspects in common with your character; it's not impossible to know someone who's like you in many ways but different in one. This is true esp...”

“I'm a little hesitant to make my characters sentimental or to risk having the work labeled sentimental. It's something that I resist as a reader, and I don't resist it in life. I'm not an un...”