Joe David Bellamy

"What we call 'creativity' is a human activity, and the queer thing about our society is that some people do it and some people don't. Whereas, in other less divided and specialized societies, everybody does it.... The real question to be asked is: Why doesn't everybody do it in our society? What is it that we do to people that makes them stop?"
--Margaret Atwood

"I think the great divine form is the novel. I think there we approach as close to divinity as we'll get."
--Joyce Carol Oates

"I maintain that the people who've made something of their lives...were neither more talented, nor more disciplined, nor more energetic, nor more driven than the rest of us. They were simply better educated."
--Annie Dillard

"I write out of that desire to be as simple and clear as I can be, as honest as I can be."
--Russell Banks

"Memory itself, I think, effective memory, is not really something that is cerebral. It is more like your skin remembers things, or what you're trying to convey is the air, the air of the place or the time, a smell or a movement that someone made or something very specific that connects with the reader really in a sensuous, associative way."
--Jayne Anne Phillips

"The atmosphere of the Saranac Conference comes alive in this remarkable volume.... Rich, textured discussions on literary craft and practice...."
--Erika Dreifus, The Writer