Harry Crews

“Authors are sick people. We are not a happy lot. It's a sickness that's driven by a compulsion to make something that wasn't there before.”

“Stories are where you go to look for the truth.”

“Guilt is the gasoline that runs the engine of the world.”

“Survival is triumph enough.”

“I have found, in my own writing, that a little hatred, keenly directed, is a useful thing.”

“You can't be a writer and have any pride. You've got to be a masochist. The rejection is just incredible.”

“A man can be defined by the things he hates.”

“There is something beautiful about all scars of whatever nature. A scar means the hurt is over, the wound is closed and healed, done with.”

“Teaching is the only major occupation of man for which we have not yet developed tools that make an average person capable of competence and performance.”

“The most profound statement is a series of gestures.”

“The world is not a courtroom. There is no judge, no jury, no prosecutor. There’s just you and your opponent.”

“A story is not a story unless it is a story about blood.”

“The writer's job is to get the main character up a tree, and then once they are up there, throw rocks at them.”

“I never wanted to be well-rounded. I do not admire well-rounded people nor their work. So far as I can see, nothing good in the world has ever been done by a well-rounded person.”

“Everything I do is some kind of confession.”