Alice McDermott

“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.”

“All my friends had grandparents who had accents. I thought all grandparents were supposed to have accents. My friends were all second-generation, as I was.”

“The language of the Catholic Church - the liturgy, the prayer, the gospels - was in many ways my first poetry.”

“I'm a coastal person. I grew up in Long Island and lived in San Diego. I felt landlocked in Pittsburgh. Psychically, it just wasn't the place for me.”

“In the act of reading, especially reading fiction, where a world is being created, all kinds of matters of belief come into play.”

“I don't want to write about violence, and I don't want to hang a plot on a murder. I think it's cheap.”

“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.”

“His love for his children bore down on his heart with the weight of three heavy stones. There were all his unnamed fears for them, and hopes for them. There was all he was powerless to change, including who they were--one too mild, one too easily tempted to be cruel, and the little girl (it was the weight of a heavy stone against his heart) a mystery to him, impossible to say what she, through her life, would need. And soon, one more.”

“If you want to see how far we have not come from the cave and the woods, from the lonely and dangerous days of the prarie or the plain, witness the reaction of a modern suburban family, nearly ready for bed, when the doorbell rings or the door is rattled. They will stop where they stand, or sit bolt upright in their beds, as if a streak of pure lightning has passed through the house. Eyes wide, voices fearful, they will whisper to each other, "There's someone at the door," in a way that might make you believe they have always feared and anticipated this moment - that they have spent their lives being stalked.”

“Any fiction writer who assumes that a character is typical no doubt runs the risk of stumbling into cliche and stereotype.”

“I believed in fictional characters as if they were a part of real life. Poetry was important, too. My parents had memorized poems from their days attending school in New York City and loved reciting them. We all enjoyed listening to these poems and to music as well.”

“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.”