Donald Ray Pollock Quotes

Some people were born just so they could be buried.

If a person does this for just a couple of years and discovers that it just isn't for him, that's okay. At least he can move on knowing that he gave it his best shot.

Look, girls don't care how many push-ups you can do. They just want to get high and wear flowers in their hair. Maybe steal a car.

The Oxys filled holes in me I hadn't realized were empty. It was, at least for those first few months, a wonderful way to be disabled. I felt blessed.

I don't really think the outburst is recent; there have always been writers in Appalachia.

I'm not sure what the proper label might be, or the most accurate one, but someone once called my stuff Southern Ohio Gothic and I thought that was fair.

As for how I feel about any success I've had, I just feel extremely lucky. Writing is a tough racket, and there are a lot of writers out there better than me who can't seem to catch a break.

I'm always doubting my work, even when people are kind enough to say good things. I still have a hard time believing I've written some books, let alone that they've actually done pretty well.

I really have no idea what the French think of my characters, or why The Devil All the Time did so well there.

I've never heard of that anthology [Vance Randolph, Pissing in the Snow], but you can be sure I'll buy it now.

I think the biggest influence on the book, as far as the humor goes, comes, at least indirectly, from the men I worked with in the paper mill. Some of them could make a dog laugh.

I think my characters - well, at least a few of them - are hoping or searching for some kind of contact with god.

One of the reasons I write about religion is due to my own envy of people who truly feel the presence of god in their lives, good souls who believe devoutly in a supreme being and an afterlife.

I look upon [writing about religion] as a nice way to get by in this precarious world, though I've never been able to do it myself.

I started going to Ohio University when I was in my mid-thirties, ended up with an English degree when I was forty.

I'm not sure I would have ever decided to try to write when I was forty-five if I hadn't already gotten that degree [in English].

[Degree in English] gave me a little more self-confidence, to know that I'd managed to complete something like that.

I don't think I'd call [mood] a major force, but it is important as far as hitting the right notes or nuances with a character or scene.

I don't think writing fiction has changed my worldview.

I've always been a bit of a pessimist in regard to mankind.

When I first started out, I was trying to write stories about nurses and lawyers and a lot of people I didn't know anything about, and they just weren't working.

Id always been a big reader, and I loved books, and I always thought writing would be a great way to get by in the world.

J.R. Angelella is a truly gifted writer. Zombie is one of the smartest, strangest, and most beautifully crafted coming-of-age stories you will ever encounter.

Michael Koryta is an amazingly talented writer, and I rank The Prophet as one of the sharpest and superbly plotted crime novels I've read in my life.

I was always a big reader, even when everything was bad and miserable.

I sort of like writing about weird characters, I guess.

When I turned fifty, I decided to quit the mill and go to graduate school.

A lot of people get the wrong impression, think there's something romantic or tragic about hitting bottom.

I spent thirty-two years in a paper mill in southern Ohio, and before that I worked in a meatpacking plant and a shoe factory.

Though there are still many good people out there in the world, it seems that they're vastly outnumbered by the stupid, selfish, violent ones.

I'm beginning to believe that anything I do to extend my life is just going to be outweighed by the agony of living it.