Joanna Scott Quotations

Masks are wonderfully paradoxical in this way: while they may hide the physical reality, they can show us how a person wants to be seen.

The past is full of examples of renegade writers who were overlooked in their time not only because their work didn't fit neatly into potted categories but also because they avoided the self-promotional efforts of their peers.

There are plenty of writers, past and present, from Shakespeare to Henry James to Lydia Davis, who test the limits of coherence and put pressure on current notions of accessible (and acceptable) narrative methods. To thrive and change and grow, any art needs this kind of pressure.

If the rules of a language are followed, words usually make sense. But these very rules can stir the impulse to rebel. We're obliged to keep trying to convey meaning through correct sentences. After a while, the good-soldier rigidity of polished prose can begin to seem dull, and it gets harder to resist the temptation of nonsense.

There's a point I set for myself, and it's an arbitrary point, when I think no matter happens, I'm going to finish that book. And that's when I get to page 100. I have to see it out.

While it can be pleasurable to move speedily through a work of fiction, there's a different sort of pleasure to be had in lingering, backtracking, rereading the same page.

How wonderful it would be to scatter words as they rise to consciousness, to let them lie where they fall.

I'm really such a bumbler! Writing fiction is like arranging furniture in a dark room. I can't see what I'm doing. I grope for the right words. I bump against the wrong words and stumble and stub my toe and curse and keep trying to guess what belongs in the space.

The novelist in me is probably hiding behind all the stories I write, looking for ways to connect them and continue the conversation with readers. Maybe I'm writing one long narrative, and each book, however different from the last, is just a chapter.

I feel there has to be a certain amount of improvisation as I'm writing, which means any idea or any commitment to a project is risky. It involves time; it involves gathering of material, and sometimes it just doesn't work. Sometimes it does. As I'm starting out on a project, I can't tell if it will click or not.