Walter Kirn
Walter Kirn
Walter Kirn is an American novelist, literary critic, and essayist. He is the author of eight books, most notably Up in the Air, which was made into a movie starring George Clooney...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
CountryUnited States of America
defensive eager fraternity insider loose nature outsider people recruiting turn
Guns can turn you into an insider even if you're an outsider by nature, recruiting you into a loose fraternity of people who feel embattled and defensive and are primally eager to win allies.
Everyone his own cinematographer. His own stream-of-consciousness e-mail poet. His own nightclub DJ. His own political columnist. His own biographer of his top-10 friends!
change future less
Writing about the future and the past is less a way of dramatizing change than of showing, by way of contrast, what abides.
stopping work
Stopping to think is fine for characters, but not for their creators. They have to work.
aspiration critic primary
My primary ambition is to be a fiction writer... Being a critic wasn't an aspiration of mine.
worst
I think of myself as writing realist American fiction. 'Cynical but hopeful' wouldn't be the worst thing I've ever been called.
forms horror itself themselves
Horror and panic themselves are forms of violence, and diminishing them, restricting their dimensions, is itself a civilizing act.
atmosphere liked
At college, I wanted to be a poet. I liked the extremely concentrated language, the atmosphere of otherworldliness.
Ask Jeeves! Who ever used that thing? College freshmen to find out who Goethe was - that's it.
A writer who isn't writing is asking for trouble.
becoming events fiction hope interact life longer notion people problem resembles somewhere stories stranger troubled writers
I read somewhere once that in the 1960s, fiction writers were troubled by the notion that life was becoming stranger and more sensational than made-up stories could ever hope to be. Our new problem - more profound, I think - is that life no longer resembles a story. Events intersect but don't progress. People interact but don't make contact.
depend endured future time won
The future of time, of how it's won or lost, endured or enjoyed, expanded or compressed, will depend on how it's valued, not how it's measured.
blame business cherish convinced count drunk inspiring involved partisan prospect public reason spreading thereby usual washington
The reason that last-ditch political maneuvering has become business as usual in Washington is that the actors involved are drunk on blame and are convinced that the voting public is, too. They count on outrage, thereby spreading numbness. They cherish the prospect of partisan fury, thereby inspiring nonpartisan disgust.
dangers health owners pose safer selling suggest
Statistics on the dangers guns pose to the health of their owners and those who live with them suggest that I'd be safer selling my guns than reserving them for 'Tombstone II.'