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
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.
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.
trying upset
because she was very upset and I was trying to do the gentlemanly thing.
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.
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.)
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.
broke compare cracked dream explained family fell fingers fingertips furnace hard hip house life light lost maybe pure three trying understand winter
What should be, is.' As my grandmother explained it to our family the winter she lost three fingertips to frostbite when the furnace in her little house broke and she fell and cracked a hip while trying to light it, 'Accepting life's imperfections is not the secret. The secret, dears, is to understand life has none. How could it? We've got nothing to compare it to. We can dream something up, of course- some pretty maybe life where fingers are very hard and indestructible- but that's pure mischief, darlings. Fingers freeze. It's one of the things they like to do sometimes.
breathing luxury relaxation
Just breathing can be such a luxury sometimes.
self names groups
It's no accident that most self-help groups use 'anonymous' in their names; to Americans, the first step toward redemption is a ritual wiping out of the self, followed by the construction of a new one.
persistence quality needs
At the beginning of a novel, a writer needs confidence, but after that what's required is persistence. These traits sound similar. They aren't. Confidence is what politicians, seducers and currency speculators have, but persistence is a quality found in termites. It's the blind drive to keep on working that persists after confidence breaks down.
writing years games
realized that at a level I'd never been conscious we'd been engaged in a game of wits for years. I suppose most writer-subject pairings are like that. Of course, I'd set aside my plan to write about him [Clark Rockfeller] as soon as I'd gotten to know him some, but now I'd resumed that intention.
choices together important
Some strangers become more important to you than family, maybe because you're not expected to love them. You can leave them whenever you want to. They can, too. Every moment together is a choice.
use turns materials
A writer turns his life into material, and if you’re in his life, he uses yours, too.
use literature consciousness
A writer has a use for his experiences that most civilians simply don't; he or she discerns material in situations that others simply live through. Perhaps there are some who disapprove of this, but without this double consciousness, literature would not get made at all.