Charles Baxter Quotes

When all the details fit in perfectly, something is probably wrong with the story.

When I'm writing, I'm waiting to see somebody, and I'm waiting to hear them. It's almost like conjuring spirits out of the air, using your own imaginative instability.

The twentieth century has built up a powerful set of intellectual shortcuts and devices that help us defend ourselves against moments when clouds suddenly appear to think.

If you want to see the consequences of ideas, write a story. If you want to see the consequences of belief, write a story in which somebody is acting on the ideas or beliefs that she has.

Ethics is a dream.

As the poet says, all happy couples are alike, it's the unhappy ones who create the stories. I'm no longer a story. Happiness has made me fade into real life.

There is such a thing as the poetry of a mistake, and when you say, "Mistakes were made," you deprive an action of its poetry, and you sound like a weasel.

When you’re in love you don’t have to do a damn thing. You can just be. You can just stay quiet in the world. You don’t have to move an inch.

In truth, there are only two realities: the one for people who are in love or love each other, and the one for people who are standing outside all that.

Forget art. Put your trust in ice cream.

[T]he astonishing purity of pain, how it will not be mixed with any other sensation.

My God, the corruptions of literature. It put all these notions into our heads.