The largest website for English phrases and quotes

The largest website for English phrases and quotes

Category: Charles Baxter

When I’m writing, I’m waiting to see somebody, and I’m waiting to hear them. It’s almost like conjuring spirits out of the air, using your own imaginative instability.

When all the details fit in perfectly, something is probably wrong with the story.

destiny, discovery, fiction, mystery, overdetermination, perfection, plot, writing

As the poet says, all happy couples are alike, it’s the unhappy ones who create the stories. I’m no longer a story. Happiness has made me fade into real life.

[T]he astonishing purity of pain, how it will not be mixed with any other sensation.

pain, purity, sensation

Ethics is a dream.

ethics, morality, philosophy

The point is that although love may die, what is said on its behalf cannot be consumed by the passage of time, and forgiveness is everything.

forgiveness, love

My God, the corruptions of literature. It put all these notions into our heads.

humor, literature

When you’re in love you don’t have to do a damn thing. You can just be. You can just stay quiet in the world. You don’t have to move an inch.

In truth, there are only two realities: the one for people who are in love or love each other, and the one for people who are standing outside all that.

[T]he astonishing purity of pain, how it will not be mixed with any other sensation.

pain, purity, sensation

If you want to see the consequences of ideas, write a story. If you want to see the consequences of belief, write a story in which somebody is acting on the ideas or beliefs that she has.

The twentieth century has built up a powerful set of intellectual shortcuts and devices that help us defend ourselves against moments when clouds suddenly appear to think.

anthropomorphization, consensual-reality, pathetic-fallacy, sanity, writing