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
trying upset
because she was very upset and I was trying to do the gentlemanly thing.
failed hoped stories
Short stories are fiction's R & D department, and failed or less-than-conclusive experiments are not just to be expected but to be hoped for.
dislike excited immediate struck took
She started out all excited and impressed. ... (She took an immediate dislike to Bill, who struck her as a narcissistic snake.)
borders fifty hundred move start
A hundred and fifty years ago, this was just a continent. You could move to the borders and start a whole new country.
came continues groups left mormons peace people rest understand west
They don't understand that in the West, there are many groups that have not yet made their peace with the rest of America. . . . People came to the West to be left alone, as the Mormons did. The West continues to be an experimental American culture.
above thoughts
I wasn't above having thoughts of God's wrath.
affairs almost four good great include record three wildly
Good short-story collections, like good record albums, are almost always hit-and-miss affairs - successful if they include three or four great tracks, wildly successful if they have five. And that's as it should be.
believe italy known remember time
I remember the first time I went to Italy when I was eighteen, I was in Florence and there were all these eighteen, nineteen, twenty-year-olds gliding past on Vespas with crinkly, long, hair, and I thought I was on the set of a movie. I couldn't believe that this was going on and I hadn't known about it before. I was flabbergasted.
advantage business game government life people personal realize science taken whether
Realize that the game of life is the game of, to some extent, being taken advantage of by people who make a science of it. Whether they are in government or personal life or in business, they're everywhere.
may realizing someday
You thought you were found but you realize that you were lost, and someday you may discover that you're lost now.
dream bad-dream vague
I preferred that my bad dreams be vague.
way honest accusing
Requesting permission from someone to be honest is really a way of accusing the other person of being so demanding or overbearing that you couldn't be honest all along.
thinking use someday
A writer is someone who tells you one thing so someday he can tell his readers another thing: what he was thinking but declined to say, or what he would have thought had he been wiser. A writer turns his life into material, and if you're in his life, he uses yours, too.
mind size fit
I feel like my head is finally the right size. I feel like it finally fits around my mind.