Jonathan Evison Quotes

It's not easy getting old, you know. Things become a lot less clear.

I write as a matter of need - seven books and God knows how many short stories before anyone published me.

I'm a DIY kinda guy.

I've been blessed with an optimistic disposition, I think.

This newfangled country is starting to grow on me, the adult despair of it all. Stuff I can relate to: lost loves, lost houses, lost dogs.

It's a cruel process, aging. Take my advice, dear, maintain your independence as long as possible.

Maybe a theme that touches all of my work is people reinventing themselves.

So often when we historicize material, we use this big wide-angle lens.

A man's destiny is not in the eyes of others. It's in his own. And that, my young friend, is as good as any bank note.

Can we really be whoever we want to be, now that we've collected all that we are?

I discovered John Fante when I was 17 years old - strangely, not through Charles Bukowski, but through William Saroyan, who was his drinking buddy.

Most everything that happens to me in any significant sense finds its way into my fiction.

I really believe in challenging myself, pushing myself to new places.

Wine is a much better salve than anything the medical profession has ever prescribed. Even the Bible condones it!

I know I've lost my mind. But I'm not concerned, because it's the first thing I've lost in a long time that actually feels good.

My neediness is not a hole to be filled but something beneath the skin scratching to get out.

I love being a struggling artist; it makes me feel very alive.

There are holes in our lives that can never be filled - not really, not ever.

Too many writers of fiction don't give the reader enough credit.

There're so many great writers out there who aren't getting the exposure they deserve.

It was quiet and smooth -a gazelle trapped in the body of a wart hog.

My parents divorced after 25 years of marriage.

He threw himself headlong at a job as if were he to stop the job would throw itself headlong back at him.

I never wanted to be anything but a writer, and I never let go of it.

The jocks that used to stuff me into a locker when I was a punk rocker are my best buddies now.

In writing, I've found, playing it safe and familiar is no way to energize anybody.

I've been thinking about the cruel mathematics of my life, looking at my sums & wishing I'd shown my work.

Homesteading is gone.

You have to smile, if you expect anybody to smile back.

Why not get a job in West Yellow Stone selling buffalo turds? I could make clocks out of them.

I usually write in my underwear, with a space heater running full blast, and three dogs sleeping at me feet.

People really do change. Don't let anyone tell you differently. That the future does not conform to the past is not the exception, but the rule.

As a result of manifest destiny, we gutted our resources.