Joy Williams (American writer)

"In July of 1995, the Copa, along with the chic restaurant Antonia's, burnt to the ground in the traditional suspicious, middle-of-the-night fire. Built in 1917 as a movie theater, it had been wearily showing Deep Throat for a decade before it was transformed in the '80's into a glossy gay cruise bar."

"What would be the point to discuss the craft of Jean Rhys, Janet Frame, Christina Stead, Malcolm Lowry, all of whose works can teach us little about technique, and whose way of touching us is simply by exploding on the lintel of our minds. It is not technique that guided them. Their craft consisted of desire. We are American writers, absorbing the American experience. We must absorb its heat, the recklessness and ruthlessness, the grotesqueries and cruelties. We must reflect the sprawl and smallness of America, its greedy optimism and dangerous sentimentality. And we must write with a pen—in Mark Twain’s phrase—warmed up in hell. We might have something then, worthy, necessary; a real literature instead of the Botox escapist lit told in the shiny prolix comedic style that has come to define us."

"Marilynne Robinson says she read Moby-Dick when she was nine. I wish I could say such a thing! I was reading horse books, dog books, the Baba Yaga stories in : my was my most treasured possession, but I didn’t read with much discrimination."