Great books are written from a sense that there is nothing to lose.

- Matthew Specktor

Sacrificing one's life on the altar of literature is in some ways like sacrificing a goat to some malicious spirit. It's not always a humane or neces…

- Matthew Specktor

We go to literature because it shows us some set of humane values. It is showing us how to live.

- Matthew Specktor

I'm going to write what I feel like writing, which is a great place to be. But it can be hard to get there. It's so easy to get stricken with one kin…

- Matthew Specktor

You look at the absolute scorn that gets poured on a fallen celebrity, whether it's Tom Cruise or Lindsay Lohan or Marlon Brando, or Elvis when he go…

- Matthew Specktor

I've always found too that somewhere in whatever you've just written lies the seed of what you're going to write next.

- Matthew Specktor

I don't feel like I'm self-conscious about what's next. I don't care. I know what it's like to be ignored, and I know what it's like not to be.

- Matthew Specktor

I thought, writing is everything, it's so much more important than this or that. If only I could give that young man a stern talking to. Having a chi…

- Matthew Specktor

There's a kind of perverseness or betrayal in that idea that art is somehow superior to life. Or that it's more important to write well than it is to…

- Matthew Specktor