Annie Proulx Quotes (29 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

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Annie Proulx

Annie Proulx: 29 quotes 0 likes

Famous Annie Proulx Quotes

“We run a car wreck photo every week, whether we have a car wreck or not. That's our golden rule.”

Annie Proulx book The Shipping News

The Shipping News (1993)

“Nutbeem influenced a little by the lunar cycle. Had a touch of werewolf. At full moon he burst, talked himself dry, took exercise in the form of dancing and fighting at the Starlight Lounge, then slowly fell back to contemplation.”

Annie Proulx book The Shipping News

Source: The Shipping News (1993), P. 75

“which bloody misbegotten Card takes the liberty of recasting in his own insane tongue. As the bloody bog-rat's just done.”

Annie Proulx book The Shipping News

Source: The Shipping News (1993), P. 58

“All stemmed from Quoyle's chief failure, a failure of normal appearance.”

Annie Proulx book The Shipping News

Source: The Shipping News (1993), P. 2

“Dad, there's smoke coming out of the can and coming out of your mouth, too. How do you do that, daddy?”

Annie Proulx book The Shipping News

Source: The Shipping News (1993), P. 42

“For the devil had long ago taken a shine to Tert Card, filled him like a cream horn with itch and irritation. His middle initial was X. Face like cottage cheese clawed with a fork.”

Annie Proulx book The Shipping News

The Shipping News (1993)

Annie Proulx Quotes about time

“the old place of the Quoyles, half ruined, isolated, the walls and doors of it pumiced by stony lives of dead generations. The aunt felt a hot pang. Nothing would drive them out a second time.”

Annie Proulx book The Shipping News

Source: The Shipping News (1993), P. 47

“Quoyle with regards to Petal, his wife, "There was a month of fiery happiness. Then six kinked years of suffering…In another time, in another sex, she would have been Genghis Khan.”

Annie Proulx book The Shipping News

Source: The Shipping News (1993), P. 13

“I don’t think I was a particularly good or diligent mother. It took a long time for the obvious to become obvious: I could not operate in a conventional family.”

Annie Proulx

On women being expected to embrace motherhood naturally in “Annie Proulx: ‘I’ve had a life. I see how slippery things can be’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jun/05/annie-proulx-ive-had-a-life-i-see-how-slippery-things-can-be in The Guardian (2016 Jun 5)
Personal life and writing career

“It’s kind of an old-fashioned book…It’s long; it has a lot of characters; it takes a big theme. It isn’t a navel-staring, dysfunctional-family thing that’s so beloved of most American writers. It’s different, but I think people probably miss those books that were written some time ago – the big book that was written with care.”

Annie Proulx

On her novel Barkskin in “Annie Proulx: ‘I’ve had a life. I see how slippery things can be’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jun/05/annie-proulx-ive-had-a-life-i-see-how-slippery-things-can-be in The Guardian (2016 Jun 5)
Personal life and writing career

“The construction of short stories calls for a markedly different set of mind than work on a novel, and for me short stories are at once more interesting and more difficult to write than longer work. The comparative brevity of the story dictates more economical and accurate use of words and images, a limited palette of events, fewer characters, tighter dialogue, strong title and punctuation that works to move the story forward. If the writer is trying to illustrate a particular period or place, a collection of short stories is a good way to take the reader inside a house of windows, each opening onto different but related views—a kind of flip book of place, time and manners.”

Annie Proulx

On her short story collection Close Range: Wyoming Stories in “An Interview with Annie Proulx” https://www.missourireview.com/article/an-interview-with-annie-proulx/ in The Missouri Review (1999 Mar 1)
Personal life and writing career

“Place and history are central to the fiction I write, both in the broad, general sense and in detailed particulars. Rural North America, regional cultures in critical economic flux, the images of an ideal and seemingly attainable world the characters cherish in their long views despite the rigid and difficult circumstances of their place and time. Those things interest me and are what I write about. I watch for the historical skew between what people have hoped for and who they thought they were and what befell them.”

Annie Proulx

On the subjects that she most likes to write about in “An Interview with Annie Proulx” https://www.missourireview.com/article/an-interview-with-annie-proulx/ in The Missouri Review (1999 Mar 1)
Personal life and writing career

Annie Proulx Quotes

“The ocean twitched like a vast cloth spread over snakes.”

Annie Proulx book The Shipping News

Source: The Shipping News (1993), P. 193

Clothes

“In a knot of eight crossings, which is about the average-size knot, there are 256 different 'over-and-under' arrangements possible… Make only one change in this 'over and under' sequence and either an entirely different knot is made or no knot at all may result.”

Annie Proulx book The Shipping News

Intro
The Shipping News (1993)

Change

“That was the stuff of other lives, he was waiting for his to begin. He got in the habit of walking around the trailer and asking aloud, "Who knows?" He said, "Who knows?" For no one knew. He meant, anything could happen. A spinning coin, still balanced on its rim, may fall in either direction.”

Annie Proulx book The Shipping News

Source: The Shipping News (1993), P. 11

Waiting

“Quoyle, who spoke little himself, inspired talkers. His only skill in the game of life”

Annie Proulx book The Shipping News

Source: The Shipping News (1993), P. 9

Life , Game

“And three lucky stones strung on a wire to keep the house safe.”

Annie Proulx book The Shipping News

Source: The Shipping News (1993), P. 45

Housing

“Petal, like a persistent song phrase, like a few stubborn lines of verse memorized in childhood. The needle was stuck.”

Annie Proulx book The Shipping News

Source: The Shipping News (1993), P. 53

Childhood

“Quoyle, you got any maritime connections?' 'My grandfather was a sealer.' 'Jesus. You always come out at me out of left field.”

Annie Proulx book The Shipping News

Source: The Shipping News (1993), P. 30

“Quoyle large, white, stumbling along going nowhere”

Annie Proulx book The Shipping News

Source: The Shipping News (1993), P. 4

“The editorial page played streams of invective across the provincial political scene like a fire hose. Harangues, pitted with epithets. Gammy bird was a hard bite. Looked life right in its shifty, bloodshot eye. A tough little paper. Gave Quoyle an uneasy feeling, the feeling of standing on a playground watching others play games whose rules he didn't know.”

Annie Proulx book The Shipping News

Source: The Shipping News (1993), P. 63

Life , Feeling , Game , Bird

“Why do we weep in grief,' the aunt wondered. 'Dogs, deer, birds sufferent with dry eyes and in silence. The dumb suffering of animals. Probably a survival technique.”

Annie Proulx book The Shipping News

Source: The Shipping News (1993), P. 24

Dogs , Bird , Silence , Suffering

“Dad, are we scared?' said Sunshine. 'No, honey. It's an adventure.”

Annie Proulx book The Shipping News

Source: The Shipping News (1993), P. 51

“It was not until the next evening that he discovered he had a page from Leviticus stuck to his back.”

Annie Proulx book The Shipping News

Source: The Shipping News (1993), P.53

“He [Quoyle] did not want a boat, shied from the thought of water. Ashamed he could not swim, couldn't learn.”

Annie Proulx book The Shipping News

Source: The Shipping News (1993), P. 49

Learning , Water

“This has always bothered me, the division: as though there was something about women who write that is very different.”

Annie Proulx

On literary prizes only awarded to women in “Annie Proulx: ‘I’ve had a life. I see how slippery things can be’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jun/05/annie-proulx-ive-had-a-life-i-see-how-slippery-things-can-be in The Guardian (2016 Jun 5)
Personal life and writing career

Women

“Where a story begins in the mind I am not sure—a memory of haystacks, maybe, or wheel ruts in the ruined stone, the ironies that fall out of the friction between past and present, some casual phrase overheard. But something kicks in, some powerful juxtaposition, and the whole book shapes itself up in the mind…”

Annie Proulx

On her writing process in in “An Interview with Annie Proulx” https://www.missourireview.com/article/an-interview-with-annie-proulx/ in The Missouri Review (1999 Mar 1)
Personal life and writing career

Past , Books , Memory

“I loathe interviews and getting me to sit still for a whole day is unprecedented.”

Annie Proulx

On her dislike of interviews in “Annie Proulx, The Art of Fiction No. 199” https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5901/annie-proulx-the-art-of-fiction-no-199-annie- in The Paris Review (Spring 2009)
Personal life and writing career