"The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers"

Last year the Believer magazine published The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers, edited by Vendela Vida.

I haven't actually laid eyes on the book, but here are a few "astonishing insights and profound quips" one should find in its pages:

George Saunders: "I see writing as part of an ongoing attempt to really, viscerally, believe that everything matters, suffering is real, and death is imminent."

Ian McEwan: "The dream, surely, that we all have, is to write this beautiful paragraph that actually is describing something but at the same time in another voice is writing a commentary on its own creation, without having to be a story about a writer."

Jamaica Kincaid: "All of these declarations of what writing ought to be, which I had myself--though, thank god I had never committed them to paper--I think are nonsense. You write what you write, and then either it holds up or it doesn't hold up. There are no rules or particular sensibilities. I don't believe in that at all anymore."

Janet Malcolm: "The narrator of my nonfiction pieces is not the same person I am--she is a lot more articulate and thinks of much cleverer things to say than I usually do."

Paul Auster: "In my own case, I certainly don't walk into my room and sit down at my desk feeling like a boxer ready to go ten rounds with Joe Louis. I tiptoe in. I procrastinate. I delay. I come in sideways, kind of sliding through the door. I don't burst into the saloon with my six-shooter ready. If I did, I'd probably shoot myself in the foot."

Tobias Wolff: "Each time out should be a swing for the fences. Don't do base-running drills. You can do those on your own time."

--Marshal Zeringue