Andre Dubus

“We are not fools because we have desires, but only because we believe that the satisfaction of desires is happiness.”

“We are all in the same boat, in a stormy sea, and we owe each other a terrible loyalty.”

“The writer's job is to get naked... To find the grossest, smallest, most embarrassing, pitiful, wrathful, ugly, shameful things you have done and put them in the mouths of your characters.”

“A story is not a report. It is a re-creation of an event or events that have the compression and unity of a dream.”

“The good writer, the great writer, has what I call a compassionate imagination.”

“The world is not a problem to be solved; it is a mystery to be lived.”

“For me, art is the restoration of order. It may discuss all sorts of terrible things, but there must be a sense of order, a sense of harmony, converted to shape.”

“The only way you can write is by the light of the bridges burning behind you.”

“Every story is a story about the soul.”

“I have always known that writing is a solitary path.”

“We don't have to live in a world where we are alone.”

“All of my life, I have been a body, and I have been a soul. But I have not been a single thing. And so I have been lonely.”

“Character is the destiny of the writer.”

“To write is to be in love.”

“I love short stories because I believe they are the way we live.”