Stanley Elkin
When I was growing up, we had a bungalow in New Jersey which we visited in the summers. Everybody in that small community was named Feldman and was either an aunt or cousin of mine. I just found it comfortable to use the name Feldman.
Like most people of my generation, I fell in love with the philosophy of existentialism.
What a writer's message is is totally unimportant. Either he is agreeing with life by affirming, or he is saying life is just a bowl of wormwood.
I don't read much nonfiction because the nonfiction I do read always seems to be so badly written. What I enjoy about fiction - the great gift of fiction - is that it gives language an opportunity to happen.
I look eight years older than everybody.
Plot is to literature what individual holes are to miniature golf.
The fact that we die is one of the more interesting things that happen to us. Fiction ought to be about bottom lines, and that's as bottom-line as you can get.
I've always been terrified of dying, always. It was a concern of mine long before it had to be.
I don't believe less is more. I believe that more is more. I believe that less is less, fat fat, thin thin and enough is enough.Collection: Believe
The peculiar dignity of men seen eating alone in restaurants on national holidaysCollection: Holiday
Writing is an exercise in sculpture, chipping away at the rock until you find the nose.Collection: Writing
I would never write about anyone who is not at the end of his rope.Collection: Writing
Life's tallest order is to keep the feelings up, to make two dollars' worth of euphoria go the distance. And life can't do that. So fiction does.Collection: Distance
Like most people of my generation, I fell in love with the philosophy of existentialism. There is no particular religious tradition in my work. There is only one psychological assertion that I would insist upon. That is: the SELF takes precedence.Collection: Religious
The furthest out is the only place to be.Collection: Crafts
It's fine, precise, detailed work, the infinitely small motor management of diamond cutters and safecrackers that we do in our heads.Collection: Management
But it's hard to talk about art. Maybe there should be a law against it, some First Amendment gag order like crying fire in a crowded theater.Collection: Art