Short stories are fiction's R & D department, and failed or less-than-conclusive experiments are not just to be expected but to be hoped for.

Next quotes

• Walter Kirn:

  Let the novelists fret about consistency - story writers should feel free to jam; to get things rig

• Walter Kirn:

  Nothing is less suspenseful than a threat that threatens the maker of the threat at least as much a

• Walter Kirn:

  The reason that last-ditch political maneuvering has become business as usual in Washington is that

• Walter Kirn:

  When I shoot at the range, I don't feel personally powerful but like the custodian of something pow

• Walter Kirn:

  Statistics on the dangers guns pose to the health of their owners and those who live with them sugg

• Walter Kirn:

  Guns can turn you into an insider even if you're an outsider by nature, recruiting you into a loose

• Walter Kirn:

  Horror and panic themselves are forms of violence, and diminishing them, restricting their dimensio

• Walter Kirn:

  A loving mother-son relationship is always a plot or outwitting of some kind. 'Don't tell anyone, b

• Walter Kirn:

  People can be so neglectful of each other and of their own heritage - then death intrudes. Conversa

• Walter Kirn:

  I read somewhere once that in the 1960s, fiction writers were troubled by the notion that life was