She likes the people with the endurance to tolerate the drudge, the ones who know that pain is a requirement, not a curse.

I'm not so sure that I can teach people how to, you know, write dialogue or create plot or anything like that. But if I can get them and grab them by the scruff of the neck and say, you can do this, and if I see that fire in their eyes, that's when I think I know a writer.

A lot of people think that writers are much cleverer than they actually are. No, they're not. But they're emotionally clever, and they go into a character, and they feel something that they weren't entirely aware of beforehand.

I think it is our job, as writers, to be epic. Epic and tiny at the same time. If you're going to be a fiction writer, why not take on something that means something. In doing this, you must understand that within that epic structure it is the tiny story that is possibly more important.

Give life long enough and it will solve all your problems, including the one of being alive.

Téa Obreht is the most thrilling literary discovery in years

The repeated lies become history, but they don't necessarily become the truth.