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

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

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

- 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

Getting inside your character's head and letting the reader see the world through not just their eyes but their sensibility creates an intimacy that …

- Stewart O'Nan

The spirit of Jane Eyre looms over Once Upon a Day. Lisa Tucker keeps the plot of this gothic novel bubbling with tons of juicy family secrets.

- Stewart O'Nan