It is not brilliance or facility that is necessary, but the determination to bear and even enjoy the dull process of wading into one's own bad prose …

- Stewart O'Nan

You couldn't relive your life, skipping the awful parts, without losing what made it worthwhile. You had to accept it as a whole--like the world, or …

- Stewart O'Nan

I don't like coming home. It keeps me from being nostalgic, which by nature I am. Even before the plane begins its descent, I find myself dreading th…

- Stewart O'Nan

The two hardest things about writing are starting and not stopping.

- Stewart O'Nan

All stories teach us something, and promise us something, whether they're true or invented, legend or fact.

- Stewart O'Nan

When I'm writing, I try to have the mask of my character on as I'm walking through the world. When I'm not at my desk, the rest of the time, I try to…

- Stewart O'Nan

The happiest she'd ever been was with him, and the saddest. Was that the true test of love?

- Stewart O'Nan

Saul Bellow once said, 'A writer is a reader who has moved to emulation' — which I think is true. I just started writing and made that jump from read…

- Stewart O'Nan

The sins of the Midwest: flatness, emptiness, a necessary acceptance of the familiar. Where is the romance in being buried alive? In growing old?

- Stewart O'Nan