The Paris Review

Our Fall issue is here—featuring interviews with Svetlana Alexievich and Donald Antrim, prose by Sam McKinniss, Scott McClanahan, and Woo Dayoung, poetry by Diane Seuss and Zakaria Mohammed, art by Silke Otto-Knapp and Laura Owens, a cover by Elizabeth Glaessner, and more. Follow the link in our bio to subscribe and read issue no. 257. buff.ly/eEDUJKN

“I didn’t know what made me write at the beginning, but it’s simple: the one who writes it keeps it.” —James Salter buff.ly/m9MRrMo

“If I get frustrated, I’ll go eat something, I’ll go open another Diet Coke, I’ll go to the barn, I’ll distract myself, and then the parts in my brain that were working click and I get an idea.” —Jane Smiley buff.ly/ZV930BP

“You see, I think it’s bad to think. A writer shouldn’t think much.” —Henry Miller buff.ly/6WRuSto

“All my writing, for me, is an experiment with itself. It’s got its own logic, its own impetus.” —Arundhati Roy buff.ly/K9j5vjm

“I like the sound of facts, but I don’t care about them as facts. I like them as texture.” —Kay Ryan buff.ly/p5WyR2N

“I certainly never intended to write poetry. That never came into my head. And now, too, I think each time I write that it may be the last time; then I’m charmed by something and seem to have to say something.” —Marianne Moore buff.ly/IWSbEfJ

“Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins.” —James Baldwin buff.ly/Lg6v2qz

“Whenever, by chance, the case was left open, and everyone abed, there was nothing to stop the cello leaping out the window and doing superhero things. This cello could fly. It could really go!” In a new piece of music criticism published today on our website, Lucy Ellmann writes about the superhuman feats of cellist Alisa Weilerstein. buff.ly/YNLn0pH

“The surreal can only work if it becomes reality.” —Herta Müller buff.ly/nU39OLd

“Anyone who has a choice and doesn’t choose not to write is a fool.” —Mary Lee Settle buff.ly/9BRRWce

“We are living in a fake world. But we find reality in this fake world.” —Haruki Murakami buff.ly/CcBy5xo

“What is so great—I’ll even say holy—about reading a poem for the first time in front of people is that you’re sharing what you felt in the moment of composition, when you were allowing something.” —Eileen Myles buff.ly/TqnideE

“Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.” —Annie Proulx buff.ly/UDMyyAy

“What kept me sane as a child far away from home was poetry—my mother and I wrote and exchanged poems, sometimes once a week, by mail.” —Kwame Anthony Appiah buff.ly/BkwGhEH

“I’ve never been a thinking person. A lot seems to happen without my conscious knowledge.” —Paul Bowles buff.ly/IzPctVv

“Writing is a way of going to the depth of Being.” —Marguerite Yourcenar buff.ly/9E9WQKy

“Work, seek, understand, or you will immolate the true self.” —Joy Williams buff.ly/6psb2Td

“As far as I’m concerned, I believe the subject chooses the writer.” —Mario Vargas Llosa buff.ly/hvrLTWg

“I don’t think we can have a good society if we don’t have good poetry.” —Octavio Paz buff.ly/j4eltps

“For a large part of my life I’ve been terrified of home.” —Derek Mahon buff.ly/ElGTS2F