Tom Barbash Quotes

Susan Rebecca White has a keen sense for how her characters talk and think. An impressive debut.

Of course I'd sometimes have characters from downstate living upstate, but it took a while for me to start writing about where I grew up.

When I teach, I try to assign writers from whom I can learn.

I'll write about California someday, I imagine, but I don't know when.

I think it's probably better to make a region your own, and then maybe you can go somewhere else, but a lot of great writers have stuck to one region.

I believe that we can access stories, and voices from those around us, more easily often than from our own imperfect memories.

I think narrators expect a high level of intimacy with their readers, and vice versa.

I tend to listen to my friends and family empathetically, and I try to help work through their problems from the inside. I try to adopt their thinking.

I think the voice can carry a story.

I'm always relearning things I thought I'd learned for good a while back.

I'm suspicious of epiphanies, because they so rarely last.

I think writers tend to hear a different message from the ones our friends and acquaintances intend. We see what's revealed, which makes us dangerous.

Being a reporter took me out of myself and that shaped me as a writer.

I had written about a small hamlet upstate, and had been called into a meeting about my story, which, as it turned out, had upset a lot of people.

I think one's person's unlikeable is another's lovable.

One good thing the teaching has given me is the ability to read and revise my own work.