Story is a yearning meeting an obstacle.

- Robert Olen Butler

We are the yearning creatures of this planet.

- Robert Olen Butler

Natural writers will often try to force themselves into a form - novel, story, screenplay, or poem - that is not necessarily the appropriate form for…

- Robert Olen Butler

The only craft and technique you have legitimate access to is the craft and technique you forgot, that has dissolved itself into the unconscious... B…

- Robert Olen Butler

The great Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa said that to be an artist means never to avert your eyes. And that's the hardest thing, because we wa…

- Robert Olen Butler

In Red Flags, Juris Jurjevics has brilliantly accomplished a feat that is becoming a major characteristic of 21st century literature: the seamless co…

- Robert Olen Butler

Jayne Anne Phillips . . . is at the height of her powers in Lark and Termite. . . . This is a major novel from one of America's finest writers.

- Robert Olen Butler

All plot comes from the character's trying to get something, to achieve something, wanting, desiring, longing.

- Robert Olen Butler

The ironic humor comes from the distance between what we understand about ourselves and what is truly going on in ourselves.

- Robert Olen Butler