Quotes by Padgett Powell - Page 1 | QuoteForever

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An indigo snake leaves a lasting impression.
Padgett Powell / Novelist
Impression
Lasting
Leaves
Snake
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Conversations are the most direct way to connect with people.
Padgett Powell / Novelist
Conversation
People
Way
Connect
Conversations
Direct Way
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In my experience, great reviews almost always ensure no sales.
Padgett Powell / Novelist
Experience Great Always
Ensure
Sales
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Life is a sandwich of activity between two periods of bed-wetting.
Padgett Powell / Novelist
Bed
Sandwiches
Two
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Heavy booze is a big time vacation, but you come back with a headache.
Padgett Powell / Novelist
Vacation
Bigs
Headache
Heavy
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If I tell you that I have robbed a bank, prepare the correct reaction.
Padgett Powell / Novelist
Ifs
Reactions
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I don't know any more about America than one knows being trapped in it.
Padgett Powell / Novelist
America
Knows
Trapped
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That's part of fiction, creating a world better than the one you live in.
Padgett Powell / Novelist
Creating
Fiction
World
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Is a gesture of charity genuine or is it a kind of deep moral tax write-off?
Padgett Powell / Novelist
Charity
Gestures
Writing
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Even if you're the worst writer in the world, at least you'll have the evidence.
Padgett Powell / Novelist
Evidence
World
Worst
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Cholesterol to go with alcohol; all the bad things in English-speaking life end in -ol.
Padgett Powell / Novelist
Alcohol
Cholesterol
Ends
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I knew I was supposed to be a writer; I had made that declaration in the closet of my soul.
Padgett Powell / Novelist
Closets
Made
Soul
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Bermuda is not even tropical. The charm of the tropics - the heat, the chaos - is not there.
Padgett Powell / Novelist
Chaos
Heat
Tropical
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I stuff animals I find; I do roadkill. They're strangely fun to have. They're like easy-to-control pets.
Padgett Powell / Novelist
Pets
Strangely
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I think William Trevor is as good as it gets. Whenever I want a book to do exactly what it says it will, I read him.
Padgett Powell / Novelist
Exactly What
William
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Writing books is a nice retreat. There's nothing quite like diving into a book for a few hours. That is a big time vacation.
Padgett Powell / Novelist
Vacation
Book
Diving
Nice
Retreat
Writing
Big Time
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If you're going to write a book that might, in its very best accidental career, sell 30,000 copies, you've got to have a day job.
Padgett Powell / Novelist
Copies
Accidental
Day Job
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I don't write anything if I'm not agreeable and liking it. I'm not one of these slavers who wads up paper. It comes or it doesn't.
Padgett Powell / Novelist
Agreeable
Liking
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I was a commercial roofer before this, until about age thirty. I will not work others under me and do not want to work under others.
Padgett Powell / Novelist
Thirty
Work Age Me
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I associate the truest spirit of Christmas with certain years when I had to spend it at my parents' house as an adult who had, presumably, escaped.
Padgett Powell / Novelist
Christmas
Truest
Associate
Escaped
Presumably
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I am writing a book more improbable than 'The Interrogative Mood' that I call 'Manifesto'. It's two guys talking who speak artificially conveniently.
Padgett Powell / Novelist
Improbable
Mood
Artificially
Conveniently
Guys
Manifesto
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Christmas is the season I use to clock failure in life. It stops time, as it were, on the year - where you are in it, where you are in your travail unto the grave.
Padgett Powell / Novelist
Christmas
Clock
Life Time Failure
Grave
Stops
Unto
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If I slip up and receive a good gift, I will not have given a good gift. This is probably a natural law that affects us all and needs a name. The Gift Reciprocal Law.
Padgett Powell / Novelist
Reciprocal
Affects
Receive
Slip
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Military brats have this toughness: they're almost like orphans or foster children; they develop little mechanisms. It sets you up to look at things a little differently.
Padgett Powell / Novelist
Foster Children
Toughness
Foster
Mechanisms
Orphans
Sets
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I met Donald Barthelme when I was 30, and it's fair to say that before that moment, I was pre-modern, and after I met him, I was nudged rather forcefully towards this other end of the spectrum.
Padgett Powell / Novelist
Spectrum
Donald
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As a boy, I was a member of a club run by the famous reptile showman Ross Allen, and the club sent its members pseudoscientific papers mimeographed on construction paper with a three-hole punch.
Padgett Powell / Novelist
Famous
Construction
Paper
Allen
Club
Member
Punch
Sent
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There's a lot of phones; but I'm out of that field. They make me feel like a prisoner of war; there's not going to be any texting for me. The pre-paid phone is the frontier of my technological advance.
Padgett Powell / Novelist
War
Phones
Texting
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I've had an addiction for a long time to the whole business of maximizing one's potential, what I call human activation. The vehicle for actualizing oneself is choice, options, seeking out the proper choices.
Padgett Powell / Novelist
Addiction
Choices
Long
Maximizing
Oneself
Seeking
Vehicle
Time Business Long
Options
Proper
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I don't write with a scheme or a plan. I write word to word, so whatever that first sentence is, having said that, one more or less had to say what comes next and next and next. Guilty of no cogitation or forethought.
Padgett Powell / Novelist
Forethought
Guilty
Scheme
More Or Less
Sentence
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Notable American Women is a weird nougat of a book that suggests Coetzee, Kafka, Beckett, Barthelme, O'Brien, Orwell, Paley, Borges-and none of them exactly. Finally you just have to chew it for its own private juice.
Padgett Powell / Novelist
Book
Juice
Notable
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If you could have a famous writer, dead or alive, write an obituary for you and really puff you up to have been something you weren’t, perhaps, or otherwise take liberties with your memory, what writer would you choose?
Padgett Powell / Novelist
Liberty
Memories
Writing
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At every Christmas, I fail to remember the daughters' shoe sizes, and they are not growing, but grown. After ostensible hard thought about who needs what, I have failed to give good gifts; I have failed to receive good gifts.
Padgett Powell / Novelist
Christmas
Failed
Gifts
Grown
Receive
Shoe
Sizes
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Every other year, I was the new boy. I found that the only way to survive was to embrace it, make a little fortress on the outside and to pretend to blend in but not to invest too much because you'll be somewhere else next year.
Padgett Powell / Novelist
Embrace
Next Year
Somewhere Else
Somewhere
Blend
Invest
Pretend
Fortress
Survive
To Survive
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They got into fact checking at the 'Paris Review,' and it was mortifying. There was a wrangle about Hemingway's lost stories that nearly killed me. It turns out he didn't lose those stories. They weren't stolen from the platform.
Padgett Powell / Novelist
Stolen
Turns
Nearly
Checking
Me Lost Lose
Hemingway
Platform
Review
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All this is rather pretentious and fey to even talk about, but Flannery O'Connor sat down to write stories. The rest of us, some of us, don't have that kind of wit and genius. We don't do that. We sit down and have some accidents.
Padgett Powell / Novelist
Accidents
Fey
Pretentious
Wit
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Travel writing is harrowing. You are in paradise, more or less, having to prove it is paradise. It is hard to have a good time trying to figure out a way to say you are having a good time, whether you are having it or not, even in paradise.
Padgett Powell / Novelist
Travel
Having A Good Time
Paradise
Prove
Time Good Travel
Figure
Harrowing
More Or Less
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Many parks in Florida have information kiosks with colorful enamel signs showing the special flora and fauna in the park. The gopher tortoise, the scrub jay, the indigo snake. At no park with an indigo snake on its kiosk signs could I find an indigo.
Padgett Powell / Novelist
Colorful
Flora
Parks
Jay
Park
Scrub
Showing
Signs
Snake
Tortoise
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I was always the new kid, and I got to know the language and the politics of being on the outside, looking in. Never being in the clique - always being a student of the clique, a subversive, and I could look around and identify the other guys who were excluded.
Padgett Powell / Novelist
Clique
Excluded
Subversive
Identify
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It's hard to say conversation has become a minimal thing, because look at the rise of mobile communications in the last 10 years. It used to be only the president had a mobile phone. Now everyone on earth, even if they have nothing else, they have a cell phone.
Padgett Powell / Novelist
Cell Phone
Rise
Cell
Communications
Minimal
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I know about the sweet home. I went to school with 'em boys, what became Lynyrd Skynyrd; I knew Allen Collins, the skinny girl-beautiful guitarist. I put Allen Collins in every travel piece I do. Travel writing is harrowing, going to Bermuda with a banjo on my knee.
Padgett Powell / Novelist
Guitarist
Skinny
Allen
Banjo
Collins
Harrowing
Lynyrd Skynyrd
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I sat down and wrote, 'Are your emotions pure? Are they the stuff of heroes or the alloyed mess of the beaten? How do you stand in relation to the potato?' And it was a lot of fun, and I kept going and woke up at some point in some horror that I had about 142 pages of this.
Padgett Powell / Novelist
Beaten
Mess
Pages
Pure
Relation
Potato
Woke
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I've sat down and written with a more or less supportable or insupportable idea or thing to say, and it ends. When it's not 200 pages, people want to call it a story. I guess they're entitled to do that. In my view, if it were a supportable idea, it would have gone 200 pages, and it didn't.
Padgett Powell / Novelist
Entitled
Pages
Sat
Guess
More Or Less
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It's hard to say conversation has become a minimal thing, because look at the rise of mobile communications in the last 10 years. It used to be only the President had a mobile phone. Now everyone on earth, even if they have nothing else, they have a cell phone. It's a larger anthropological shift in my mind than even the tattoo age in the United States.
Padgett Powell / Novelist
Communication
Phones
Tattoo
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Have you come over time to think that you know more now than you did when you were young, know less now than when young, know now there is so much more to know than you knew there was to know when young that it is moot whether you think you knew more then than now or less, or do you now know that you never knew anything at all and never will and only the bluster of youth persuaded you that you did or would?
Padgett Powell / Novelist
Bluster
Thinking
Youth
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