In a time when so many things are changing, it is reassuring that Deborah Kalb continues to publish her insightful interviews with fiction and nonfiction authors multiple times each week.
Her interviews elicit wonderful behind the scenes comments about how authors write their books, starting with the germ of an idea. When applicable, she also provides links to her earlier Q&As with authors.
This post follows my most recent curation of quotes from Deborah’s Q&As, which are mainly drawn from my regular Twitter quotes about the interviews. As in my previous posts, I’ve provided links to the original interviews, along with book titles and quotes.
Be sure to read the entire interviews, especially if you are in search of creative inspiration!
Author: Mary Pipher
Book: A Life in Light: Meditations on Impermanence
Author quote: “We still cannot predict our future. One of the great skills of life is accepting impermanence and living fully in the present moment.”
Author: Lauren Belfer
Book: Ashton Hall
Author quote: “As to what surprised me most as I researched the novel, I think it was this very process—that tiny clue by tiny clue, I could conjure an entire world from account ledgers and library registers.”
Author: B.A. Shapiro
Book: Metropolis
Author quote: “I usually do at least six or seven full drafts of my novels, with each page rewritten at least 20 times over the three to four years it takes me to write it.”
Author: Ray Scott
Book: The NBA in Black and White: The Memoir of a Trailblazing NBA Player and Coach
Author quote: “I take pride in the league because, as a young NBA coach in 1972 at age 34, I was one of only three black coaches.”
Author: Shirlene Obuobi
Book: On Rotation
Author quote: “But in medical school, I went to a talk by Junot Diaz during which he spoke directly to the writers of color in the room and told us not to be afraid to speak from experience. And it really opened my eyes.”
Author: Madeline Bocaro
Book: In Your Mind: The Infinite Universe of Yoko Ono
Author quote: “Unfortunately, as articulate as Yoko is, she was always publicly asked the same questions about John or the Beatles.”
Author: Jeff Nussbaum
Book: Undelivered: The Never-Heard Speeches That Would Have Rewritten History
Author quote: “There’s the saying, History doesn’t repeat, it rhymes. But I found that it repeats and it rhymes.”
Author: Phaedra Patrick
Book: The Messy Lives of Book People
Author quote: “I like to write fiction that takes readers on an uplifting journey and I always give my characters a happy ever after.”
Author: Jean Hanff Korelitz
Book: The Latecomer
Author quote: “When you create an insoluble problem and get to solve it, it’s very satisfying. Maybe it’s the thriller writer in me.”
Author: Rachel Sharona Lewis
Book: The Rabbi Who Prayed with Fire
Author quote: “I was enthralled by the world Kemelman created. It was familiar to me—about a rabbi at a conservative shul. The books were talking about themes and ideas I had never seen in a mystery before. I bought the whole series and read them.”
Author: Umar Turaki
Book: Such a Beautiful Thing to Behold
Author quote: “The book is a meditation on seeing, on how you look at the world and the power you have in what you choose to acknowledge in your life.”
Author: Eimear Ryan
Book: Holding Her Breath
Author quote: “I started thinking and reading about the deaths of great artists and the many reverberations and repercussions from their deaths. Then I thought, what would it be like to be related to a figure like that?”
Author: David Wright Faladé
Book: Black Cloud Rising
Author quote: “Where, in a book of nonfiction, I just could not explore Richard’s family heritage in the way that I wanted to, as fiction, I could. I needed the breadth and scope that a novel offers in order to imagine and explore these relationships fully.”
Author: Matt Richtel
Book: Inspired: Understanding Creativity: A Journey Through Art, Science, and the Soul
Author quote: “What I take away from this book is that creativity is innate. It is, arguably, the defining characteristic of the human spirit. We create to survive, to progress, to distract, to endure, to self-soothe and promote.”
Author: Nell McShane Wulfhart
Book: The Great Stewardess Rebellion: How Women Launched a Workplace Revolution at 30,000 Feet
Author quote: “Researching the book was a combination of extensive reading and digging through archives, many, many phone interviews, and the best part—going to visit Patt, Tommie, and Sonia in person to talk to them about their experiences.”
Author: Lian Dolan
Book: Lost and Found in Paris
Author quote: “I tend to file away inspiration for years before acting on it and a headline from the days just after 9/11 was one of those pieces of inspiration. I incorporated that into the book.”
Author: Dennis Duncan
Book: Index, A History of the: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age
Author quote: “The index breaks a book up into discrete units of information. You don’t have to read in a linear way, from start to finish; the index will just allow you to raid the book for the morsel you’re looking for.”
Author: Claudia Kalb
Book: Spark: How Genius Ignites, from Child Prodigies to Late Bloomers
Author quote: “One of the most meaningful lessons I learned is that even though periods of contemplation and exploration may feel directionless—even squandered—they are actually fruitful, and often critical to discovery.”
Author: Diane Dreher
Book: The Tao of Inner Peace
Author quote: “The Tao leader is a facilitator who brings out the best in people, creating new possibilities that no one individual could find alone. And this approach raises morale.”
Author: Alice McDowell
Book: Dance of Light: Christian, Sufi and Zen Wisdom for Today’s Spiritual Seeker
Author quote: “After decades of teaching, guiding others, and engaging in my own spiritual practice, I awoke one morning to an inner voice, telling me to write down all the wisdom I had gained over the years. I took this directive seriously and started to write.”
Author: Lisa Barr
Book: Woman on Fire
Author quote: “My goal was to use this singular canvas to represent the nearly 650,000 works of art that were stolen, confiscated, and destroyed during the Nazi regime.”
Author: J.A. Jance
Book: Nothing to Lose
Author quote: “I spent several years as a librarian/storyteller on the Tohono O’odham reservation near Tucson. One of the principals of Tohono O’odham storytelling is that a story must end where it begins.”
Author: Cathy A. Lewis
Book: The Road We Took: 4 Days in Germany 1933
Author quote: “I printed scads of articles and combed the Gannett News database for information regarding the World Jamboree. Surprisingly, I found many articles written in the Democrat and Chronicle, my dad’s hometown newspaper.”
Author: Rebecca Mead
Book: Home/Land: A Memoir of Departure and Return
Author quote: “Fortunately, either through personality or through habit, I have always thrived on not quite feeling at home wherever I am. I guess I am at home with that feeling of being out of place—I find it strangely reassuring.”
Author: Majora Carter
Book: Reclaiming Your Community: You Don’t Have to Move Out of Your Neighborhood To Live in a Better One
Author quote: “I hope people who read the book will see themselves in these stories, as people who have helped or hindered our progress – maybe without even knowing what they were participating in.”
Author: Tiya Miles
Book: All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, A Black Family Keepsake
Author quote: “As always, I relied on the goodwill and expertise of numerous librarians and archivists, mostly in South Carolina.”
Author: Shauna Robinson
Book: Must Love Books
Author quote: “When I started writing this book, I was an editorial assistant and I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life–I only knew that I didn’t want to work in publishing anymore.”
Author: Steven Schwartz
Book: The Tenderest of Strings
Author quote: “When I was young and thinking about a career in psychology, I worked at a family therapy institute and saw firsthand how any family is a network: you can’t press on one part without it affecting another part.”
Author: Robert L. Dilenschneider
Book: Nailing It: How History’s Awesome Twentysomethings Got It Together
Author quote: “I want readers to take away the idea that at any stage of your life you can start something and make it successful.”