Civilizations grow by agreements and accomodations and accretions, not by repudiations. The rebels and the revolutionaries are only eddies, they keep the stream from getting stagnant but they get swept down and absorbed, they're a side issue. Quiet desperation is another name for the human condition. If revolutionaries would learn that they can't remodel society by day after tomorrow -- haven't the wisdom to and shouldn't be permitted to -- I'd have more respect for them ... Civilizations grow and change and decline -- they aren't remade.
Wallace StegnerGrub Street turns out good things almost as often as Parnassus. For if a writer is hard up enough, if heโs far down enough (down where I have been and am rising from, I am really saying), he canโt afford self-doubt and he canโt let other peopleโs opinions, even a fatherโs, keep him from writing.
Wallace StegnerCreation is a knack which is empowered by practice, and like almost any skill, it is lost if you don't practice it.
Wallace StegnerThe flimsy little protestations that mark the front gate of every novel, the solemn statements that any resemblance to real persons living or dead is entirely coincidental, are fraudulent every time. A writer has no other material to make his people from than the people of his experience ... The only thing the writer can do is to recombine parts, suppress some characterisitics and emphasize others, put two or three people into one fictional character, and pray the real-life prototypes won't sue.
Wallace Stegner