I first met Susan Sontag in spring 1976 when she was recovering from cancer surgery and needed someone to help type her correspondence. I had been recommended by the editors of ‘The New York Review of Books,’ where I’d worked as an editorial assistant. Sigrid Nunez Read Quote
Read as much as possible, especially the work of writers who most deeply affect you. Make those writers your family. Never wait for inspiration to strike before getting to work; be disciplined and form the habit of writing every day. Sigrid Nunez Read Quote
When I was a kid and wanted to grow up to be a writer, I assumed I would be writing about animals and children because that’s what I cared about and read about. But I never did. Sigrid Nunez Read Quote
There’s a lot of material from my life in my books, but they’re not really autobiographical, in the sense that they’re not about my life. So, in ‘A Feather on the Breath of God’ I write about my parents, I write about this Russian immigrant, I write about the world of dance, but it isn’t an autobiography; so much is left out. Sigrid Nunez Read Quote
Working at the ‘Review’, if anything, the impression you got was, ‘I’ll never be good enough. I’ll never work hard enough. I’ll never be devoted enough.’ These people are staying up all night over their sentences! Sigrid Nunez Read Quote
You don’t sit there at twenty-five, unpublished, inexperienced, and respond to Susan Sontag’s editorial suggestions like a little snot, rejecting every one of them. But it had a lot to do with the fact that I didn’t admire Susan’s own fiction. Sigrid Nunez Read Quote
Unfortunately, I was like a lot of my own students, who don’t really want criticism, just encouragement. Sigrid Nunez Read Quote
You might not remember what you had for dinner last night, but you remember everything about one particular summer of your youth. It’s like that. Sigrid Nunez Read Quote
