John Freeman Quotes

I think writing in general can help us deal with anything we fear, anything which troubles us, anything that makes us angry or moves us. In fact, in most cases, writing has to engage with these feelings - the lack of engagement you find in parts of American writing is a form of imperialism turned inward. We don't see the poor, the abject, the destitute in fiction and literature nearly as much as we should.

One of Solstad's regular "connecting" statements in his narrative is: "Vi skal komme tilbakke til . . . " - "We shall come to-back to . . .

I usually put it aside, however good it may be, after, sometimes, eighty or a hundred pages, or less, having in some sense not only absorbed its nature but saturated myself with it.

Publishing has no onus to be representative, but a fourth of America lives in conditions close to or below the poverty line. Think about the last time you read a novel in which someone went to cash a benefit check or paid for food in food stamps, or got off a double-shift at a retail store and were having their home or car repossessed. These are the conditions in which much of this country lives and it is a dereliction of capability (not duty) to ignore it in literature.

There can be a lot done if you are not so particular about who gets credit for it.

I had never heard of the little Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid. And yet, that's where it all began. With an ordinary incident, one that happens frequently, but so frequently that it finally started something unstoppable.

True storytellers write not because they can but because they have to. There is something they want to say about the world that can only be said in a story.

The minimum wage was enacted in 1937 during the Great Depression and it has been increased 16 times. It's a well-established economic policy to help families.