Joanna Scott Quotes & Sayings

“There are plenty of writers, past and present, from Shakespeare to Henry James to Lydia Davis, who test the limits of coherence and put pressure on current notions of accessible (and acceptable) narrative methods. To thrive and change and grow, any art needs this kind of pressure.”

“How wonderful it would be to scatter words as they rise to consciousness, to let them lie where they fall.”

“In the early 1980s, I spent a year working as an assistant at the Elaine Markson Literary Agency.”

“In the ongoing celebration that is literature, we are asked to imagine ourselves as other selves, for better or worse.”

“Jim Longenbach, poet, critic, and my husband, is always passing along life-changing books for me to read.”

“Masks are wonderfully paradoxical in this way: while they may hide the physical reality, they can show us how a person wants to be seen.”

“The best liars lie with their eyes rather than with their words. This might put writers at a disadvantage.”

“As children know, there's lots of fun in nonsense. We never stop benefiting from staying flexible, open and responsive, even in the midst of confusion.”

“I don't think Donald Barthelme would have minded being called a confusing writer. Confusion was a favorite subject for him in his essays and reviews, and it's enacted in his fiction in a mishmash of dizzying incongruities.”

“I feel there has to be a certain amount of improvisation as I'm writing, which means any idea or any commitment to a project is risky. It involves time; it involves gathering of material, and sometimes it just doesn't work. Sometimes it does. As I'm starting out on a project, I can't tell if it will click or not.”