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Quotes from Interview with The Paris Review — Hortense Calisher

1911–2009 United States

← All quotes by Hortense Calisher

11 quotes

At their best they’re our moral health—and our hope.

Interview with The Paris Review (1987)

I grew up, you know, in a generation of war novels and macho—Hemingway’s being the most prominent.

Interview with The Paris Review (1987)

Motherhood has no firm curriculum, but it can make you mechanically minded, and it can connect you firmly to physical life.

Interview with The Paris Review (1987)

I am more interested in wars of the mind.

Interview with The Paris Review (1987)

As for complication—or complexity—it excites me.

Interview with The Paris Review (1987)

I think you write better about women if you don’t write about women exclusively. As with any subject.

Interview with The Paris Review (1987)

The page isn’t all of my life. It’s what I offer from it.

Interview with The Paris Review (1987)

When we test out our own insights on how other people might feel, the testing ground is ourselves. Our views on anything from politics to landscape are tinctured with our personality.

Interview with The Paris Review (1987)

The subject dictates the approach. I don’t consult with myself beforehand. It happens.

Interview with The Paris Review (1987)

That’s the wonder of the English language. That its words can alternate between rough and soft, harsh and sweet. And, best of all maybe, short and long.

Interview with The Paris Review (1987)

But you are a feminist, aren’t you? HC: Born. But not orthodox. And the writer part comes first. I’d never write propaganda.

Interview with The Paris Review (1987)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Hortense Calisher (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.