Top 18 Carolyn Chute Quotes

Grave silence is far more powerful than the same old voices yapping away.

Because school was so terrible was probably why I was driven to write.

That’s the way we see life: your community is your survival. And if you live in a small community like this, even the people you hate you have as friends.

Whenever I write, I write what I find to be the way people are. I never use any symbolism at all, but if you write as true to life as you possibly can, people will see symbolism. They’ll all see different symbolism, but they’re apt to because you can see it in life.

Your community is your survival.

Sometimes a manuscript is like bread dough. You have to abuse it.

There’s no writer’s block; there’s only distraction.

Spend as much time as you can in silence. Look at the way the sun paints the ground gold.

Today’s world is very cruel.

People who work in factories or in the woods or maybe a dairy farm – for years, I’ve been fascinated with people like that. No pretensions. They just live their lives. I found them beautiful. They were all I seemed to be interested in writing about.

What poor people go through, it’s amazing they don’t do more violent things! If they’d just give you a little dignity, it might help you stand it better. They suffer no heat, no electricity, while you’re working, but then you’ve got to face all the insults, too.

I never wanted to be a writer. I still don’t.

When we go out in the world together, we don’t get beat down.

Sadly I don’t work well under restrictions. I need to forget the world and its rules and laws in order to enter the dreamlike flow of the fictional world. So I may be in some bad trouble.

I have lived poverty. I didn’t choose it. No one would choose humiliation, pain, and rage.

I am a person who can’t teach writing or make a living in any public way, as I get confused when interrupted or overstimulated. In a classroom or crowded room, I all but blank out. So my only income is from novels.

We don’t want the government to have anything we don’t have, because government isn’t ‘We The People’ anymore.

Every time I think I know what’s right and wrong, I end up being wrong. All I want to do is explore. I want to see what people would do. I say, ‘What would this person do in this situation?’ and I write it down. I’m not writing manifestos of my political views.