List of Ron Rash Quotes

I Think Writing A Poem Is Like Being A Greyhound. Writing A Novel Is Like Being A Mule. You Go Up One Long Row, Then Down Another, And Try Not To Look Up Too Often To See How Far You Still Have To Go.

Furthermore, Even If Ideas Were Gettable - Say, Stacked In A Secluded Cave Like The Dead Sea Scrolls - I Wouldn't Go There. An 'idea,' Especially One Adhered To From Start To Finish, Can Be Disastrous For A Compelling Piece Of Fiction.

I Live In Cullowhee, North Carolina. That's Where I Teach, At Western Carolina University. That Region Is Where My Family Has Lived For A Long Time And That Region Is My Landscape.

I Love Learning About Different Dialects And I Own All Sorts Of Regional And Time-period Slang Dictionaries. I Often Browse Through Relevant Ones While Writing A Story. I Also Read A Lot Of Diaries And Oral Histories.

On The Last Drafts, I Focus On The Words Themselves, Including The Rub Of Vowels And Consonants, Stressed And Unstressed Syllables. Yet Even At This Stage I'm Often Surprised. A Different Ending Or A New Character Shows Up And I'm Back To Where I Began, Letting The Story Happen, Just Trying To Stay Out Of The Way.

I Usually Do At Least A Dozen Drafts And Progressively Make More-conscious Decisions. Because I've Always Believed Stories Are Closer To Poems Than Novels, I Spend A Lot Of Time On The Story's Larger Rhythms, Such As Sentence And Paragraph Length, Placement Of Flashbacks And Dialogue.

I Think I Had A Particular Moment When I Was 15 Years Old. I Read 'crime And Punishment,' And That Book Just, I Think, More Than Any Other Book Made Me Want To Be A Writer, 'cause It Was The First Time That I Hadn't Just Entered A Book, But A Book Had Entered Me.

As I Get Older I Find Myself Thinking It All Begins With Shakespeare.

It’s Ever Been The Way Of The Man Of Science Or Philosophy. Most Folks Stay In The Dark And Then Complain They Can’t See Nothing.” – Snipes (185)

The Woman Doesn't Look Up. It's As If She's Deaf. Maybe She Is. Maybe She's Like The Cambodian Women I've Read About, The Ones Who Witnessed So Many Atrocities That They Have Willed Themselves Blind. Maybe That's What You Have To Do Sometimes To Survive. You Kill Off Part Of Yourself, Your Hearing Or Eyesight, Your Capacity For Hope.

It Struck Her How Eating Was A Comfort During A Hard Time Because It Reminded You That There Had Been Other Days, Good Days, When You’d Eaten The Same Thing. Reminded You There Were Good Days In Life, When Precious Little Else Did. (268)

Peter Geye Has Rendered The Minnesota North Shore In All Its Stark, Dangerous Beauty, And It Is The Perfect Backdrop For This Deeply Moving Story Of Conflict And Forgiveness. Safe From The Sea Is A Remarkable Debut.