Walter Kirn quotes

It's no accident that most self-help groups use 'anonymous' in their names; to Americans, the first step toward redemption is a ritual wiping out of the self, followed by the construction of a new one. (Walter Kirn)
Since the founding of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other mainstays of what technology writers have come to call 'the social Web' or 'Web 2.0,' a sizable portion of humanity has learned to be together while apart, sacrificing intimacy for control and spontaneity for predictability.
Walter Kirn
People can be so neglectful of each other and of their own heritage - then death intrudes. Conversations we wish that we'd had earlier are had too late.
Walter Kirn
My mother used to push 'Wuthering Heights' on me as a boy, and I sensed from her breathy description of the story that it would make me laugh. I have no plans to find out if this is true.
Walter Kirn
Art, art of any kind, shows that folks are trying.
Walter Kirn
Just breathing can be such a luxury sometimes.
Walter Kirn
In the age of networked everything, life moves sideways and covers lots of ground while barely touching the earth.
Walter Kirn
The strange anthropological lesson of social media is that human beings, if given a choice, often prefer to socialize alone.
Walter Kirn
I'm a magpie in my fiction, taking whatever looks shiny and curious to line the nest of my story.
Walter Kirn
Everyone loves a witch hunt as long as it's someone else's witch being hunted.
Walter Kirn
I love reference books, especially collections of memorable quotations, almanacs, and atlases. Facts to me are like candy or popcorn - small, tasty delights - and I like to gorge on them now and then. (Walter Kirn)
A writer is someone who tells you one thing so someday he can tell his readers another thing: what he was thinking but declined to say, or what he would have thought had he been wiser. A writer turns his life into material, and if you're in his life, he uses yours, too.
Walter Kirn
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.
Walter Kirn