Andre Dubus
Andre Dubus
Andre Jules Dubus IIwas an American short story writer, essayist, and autobiographer...
children father divorce
Years later I would hear my father say the divorce had left him dating his children. That still meant picking us up every Sunday for a matinee and, if he had the money, an early dinner somewhere.
beautiful book fall
There are some beautiful books out there. But the ones that leave me cold are the ones where I feel—it’s that postmodern thing—it’s more experimentation with language than it is a deep compassionate falling into another human being’s experience.
dream teaching writing
Teaching well draws from the same well that writing draws from: the reserves of compassion and ability to listen and concentrate on another. So I have to have fine line between teaching and writing. I try not to ever think of career. I just try to go to the dream world every day.
joy sorrow life-is
The truth is life is full of joy and full of great sorrow, but you can't have one without the other.
short-love pain believe
I love short stories because I believe they are the way we live. They are what our friends tell us, in their pain and joy, their passion and rage, their yearning and their cry against injustice.
moments ifs hard
It is not hard to live through a day, if you can live through a moment.
teacher class sound
I know I learn a lot from the students in my class and I'm not just saying that to sound like some generous teacher.
art effort littles
What is art if not a concentrated and impassioned effort to make something with the little we have, the little we see?
writing
Even a day writing badly for me is 10 times better than a day where I don’t write at all.
book cutting stories
Wanting to know absolutely what a story is about, and to be able to say it in a few sentences, is dangerous: it can lead us to wanting to possess a story as we possess a cup... A story can always break into pieces while it sits inside a book on a shelf; and, decades after we have read it even twenty times, it can open us up, by cut or caress, to a new truth.
essence way looks
I read poetry every day. I love the boiled down essence of poetry. I look for poetry in prose. In a way that evocative.
arms ghost embrace
Fear is a ghost; embrace your fear, and all you’ll see in your arms is yourself.
book writing hatred
But the writer who endures and keeps working will finally know that writing the book was something hard and glorious, for at the desk a writer must try to be free of prejudice, meanness of spirit, pettiness, and hatred; strive to be a better human being than the writer normally is, and to do this through concentration on a single word, and then another, and another. This is splendid work, as worthy and demanding as any, and the will and resilience to do it are good for the writer's soul.
gratitude heart loss
We receive and we lose, and we must try to achieve gratitude; and with that gratitude to embrace with whole hearts whatever of life that remains after the losses.