“[Writing is] observing, telling stories, performing this magic trick of being the conduit for experiences for other people.” — Susan Orlean

“Yes, I love arranging the words and having them fall on the ear the right way and you know you’re not quite there and you’re redoing it and redoing it and there’s a wonderful thrill to it. But it is hard. It’s a job of tremendous anxiety for me.” — Elizabeth Strout

“For me the idea of writing not for publication is a little like drinking alone. To me, drinking is sort of a social experience. [Writing] is like coming home from a great trip and sitting around a dinner table and saying, I’ve got to tell you about this.”– Susan Orlean

“I think of it very much as a relationship. It has different stages when I’m first putting it down, but it’s a relationship, and it’s a very intimate relationship, which is what’s sort of mysterious and wonderful about it. It’s solitary—obviously we all know that we work alone—and yet there’s this voice. You’re trying to reach another person with this voice.” — Elizabeth Strout

“It’s a constant juggling of how can I tell something that I feel so intensely but that can be received with, not joy every minute or anything like that, but in a way that’s truthful to you.” — Elizabeth Strout

“I will leave pages around the apartment to come upon by surprise. Like, what does this look like if I’m putting my earrings in and it’s on the bureau and I have to turn. What does it look like if I come upon it? I’ve done that for years.” — Elizabeth Strout

“I don’t understand the great fear of e-readers. Maybe I’m missing something, but I think you can look at iPods and music and, you know, it was a shift to a different form that I actually think encourages people buying more music, because you don’t have to build yet another shelf in your house to have those CDs.” — Susan Orlean

“Also [e-reading] will no longer enable people to have books on their shelves as signifiers of how smart they are. There’s no reason to download a book unless you intend to read it. There’s no need to show off.” — Kurt Anderson

“I don’t think anybody really expects e-books to supplant printed books, because I don’t think that they’re ever going to be that much more enjoyable a way to read a book. It was different with downloads and iPods; that’s a better way to hear music than a CD is. I think that what e-books will do is enable people to carry a few hundred books with them on a trip rather than struggling with a suitcase to take five along. But I don’t think it will be the same transformative thing that audible downloads have been.” — Lawrence Block

“I’m much more willing to buy a novel electronically by someone I don’t know. Because if halfway through I think, I don’t really like this, I can just stop. I can’t throw books out, even if I think they’re crummy. I feel like I’ve got to give it to the library, I’ve got to loan it to somebody, or I keep it on my shelf. It’s like a plant.” — Susan Orlean

“Just so I know that I’ve said it, I want to say here that I think, no matter what form books take, I think the basic purpose of writing, serious writing, the kind of writing we all do, is going to be the same: to examine the great questions. I don’t think that’s going to change at all.” — Robert A. Caro

[Excerpts from a Newsweek interview (“The Write Stuff,” by Jon Meacham) published on June 27, 2009]