When I first started out, I was trying to write stories about nurses and lawyers and a lot of people I didn't know anything about, and they just weren't working.
Donald Ray PollockI think my characters - well, at least a few of them - are hoping or searching for some kind of contact with god.
Donald Ray PollockI started going to Ohio University when I was in my mid-thirties, ended up with an English degree when I was forty.
Donald Ray PollockI spent thirty-two years in a paper mill in southern Ohio, and before that I worked in a meatpacking plant and a shoe factory.
Donald Ray PollockI don't think my book is any more shocking than if I went out right now and brought back your local newspaper and found a story that happened around here yesterday or the day before that's just as shocking as anything in my book.
Donald Ray PollockI took a correspondence course with a guy at Ohio University. He gave me ten exercises, and one of them resulted in the story "Bactine." It pleased me a lot more than anything else I'd ever done, so I kept messing around and by the time I got to Ohio State I'd written maybe eight stories.
Donald Ray Pollock