Our task as fiction writers isn’t just to report something that didn’t really happen. We have to give what we write a sense of reality. The tool of our tradition is language. Alice McDermott Read Quote
Character is primary. What happens as far as plot and events is not as intriguing to me as what’s happening inside this particular person. Alice McDermott Read Quote
I’m more interested in character than events. I’ve observed that about myself as a writer. I find events, even the most dramatic sort, not to be such fertile ground. Alice McDermott Read Quote
As a writer, you have to put yourself in service to the character, get behind their eyes by delineating the world where the character develops. You have to listen to the character and see him inside his certain world to know what conclusions he would draw. Alice McDermott Read Quote
Most of the characters I write with don’t think an awful lot about their faith. They’re not always questioning the church or feeling confined by the church or rebelling against the church. Alice McDermott Read Quote
I’ve always believed you go to literature to find the shared human experience, not the categorized human experience. Alice McDermott Read Quote
Any adjective you put before the noun ‘writer’ is going to be limiting in some way. Whether it’s feminist writer, Jewish writer, Russian writer, or whatever. Alice McDermott Read Quote
I think it’s handy for a dramatist of any sort, if I can call myself that, to make use of weddings and wakes, to make use of those moments and those rituals that cause us to pause and look back or look forward and understand that life has changed. Alice McDermott Read Quote
I am trying to cultivate the notion that constantly misplacing one’s cell phone is a charming eccentricity… my children aren’t buying it. Alice McDermott Read Quote
