Diane Johnson Quotations

The Novelist, afraid his ideas may be foolish, slyly puts them in the mouth of some other fool and reserves the right to disavow them.

Not having to own a car has made me realize what a waste of time the automobile is.

Women have the feeling that since they didn't make the rules, the rules have nothing to do with them.

Laughter is the jam on the toast of life. It adds flavor, keeps it from being too dry, and makes it easier to swallow.

In what we think of as bad dialogue, the characters talk directly to each other.

Statuettes of drunken sailors, velvet pictures of island maidens, plastic seashell lamps made in Taiwan. What contempt the people who think up souvenirs have for other people.

Glenda Adams has written a wicked and witty novel.

A chaplain's biggest gift is to be present and just listen.

Any essayist setting out on a frail apparatus of notings and jottings is a brave person.

The whole process of writing a novel is having this great, beautiful idea and then spoiling it.

...is this not in fact the purpose of young Americans going abroad? To make them think of things they never thought of?

But novels are never about what they are about; that is, there is always deeper, or more general, significance. The author may not be aware of this till she is pretty far along with it. A novel's whole pattern is rarely apparent at the outset of writing, or even at the end; that is when the writer finds out what a novel is about, and the job becomes one of understanding and deepening or sharpening what is already written. That is finding the theme.

I don't know why in the world you would want to turn Cream Ridge into suburbia. I tell people it's the best kept secret in New Jersey.

I will miss being involved in the daily happening of young people and having the opportunity to see them mature.

I saw a white T-shirt and a blond head on the other side of the tree and honked the horn for about 10 seconds,

Our whole idea is to save these things for future generations.

A novel's whole pattern is rarely apparent at the outset of writing, or even at the end; that is when the writer finds out what a novel is about, and the job becomes one of understanding and deepening or sharpening what is already written. That is finding the theme.

This is the first time it's been together. It's a big deal to us.

I told him, the kids and I are leaving, ... And I wanted him to come, and he said he was going to stay.