Lit

Surely all art is the result of one's having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, to where no one can go any further.

Anybody with a normal IQ can manage that. But saying anybody can be a writer is kind of like saying anybody can compose a sonata. Oh, forget it! In any art, there is an initial gift that had to be there. I don’t know how big it has to be, but it’s got to be there.

I have this theory that what distinguishes decent writing from good writing and good writing from great writing is just how rigorous the writer was in his or her curiosity, just how authentic and sincere they were. In the A-plus books, the writer went to the bottom of the experience and what did he or she find? More bottomlessness. There are no answers, there are only questions.

The reader is always faced with the question of what a particular gesture, a particular detail means. It is not enough to say that it need not mean anything because it simply is. The meaningless accumulation of accurately observed detail cannot satisfy us for long; only if the details are made to tell, only if they are weighted with a significance for the lives shown, will they be tolerable.

We each nurture a private terror that some core aspect(s) of either our selves or our story must be hidden or disowned. With every manuscript I've ever edited--even grown-assed writers'--the traits a writer often fights hardest to hide may serve as undeniable facets both of self and story.

The gold of memoir combines the gifts of the novelist-- vivid characters and settings, lively and suspenseful narration -- with a poet’s introspection and close attention to language

I look upon literature as an art, and I practice it as an art. Of course, it is also a vocation, and a trade, and a profession, and all kinds of things; but first it’s an art, and you should practice it as that

Matt Caprioli

Matt Caprioli

Lit