Ron Rash Quotes & Sayings

“I learnt how to hunt rattlesnakes with an eagle for 'Serena.'”

“Sometimes I know what my characters are moving away from or toward; more often I just wait and see. For instance, though I knew Sinkler in 'The Trusty' was going for water, I did not know that he would meet a fetching young farm wife until I got him into her front yard.”

“I love learning about different dialects and I own all sorts of regional and time-period slang dictionaries. I often browse through relevant ones while writing a story. I also read a lot of diaries and oral histories.”

“I usually do at least a dozen drafts and progressively make more-conscious decisions. Because I've always believed stories are closer to poems than novels, I spend a lot of time on the story's larger rhythms, such as sentence and paragraph length, placement of flashbacks and dialogue.”

“Faulkner came from my region and taught me how you could write about a place.”

“I think writing a poem is like being a greyhound. Writing a novel is like being a mule. You go up one long row, then down another, and try not to look up too often to see how far you still have to go.”

“As I get older I find myself thinking it all begins with Shakespeare.”

“'Cool-Hand Luke' is one of my favorite movies.”

“I wouldn't mind being a track and field coach.”

“One of my goals is to allow readers to see my characters and the world they inhabit as vividly as possible.”