Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction Quotes

“We all share a biology and deep drives, and what we have created---civilization, courtesy, decency---is a mesh that comes from those drives and also contains and tames them. Whatever feels good is not necessarily good. But what I learn is whatever is bad is not necessarily alien to me. Or to you.”
― Charles Bowden, Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: Work from 1970 to the Present

“...my thoughts don't really bump along this way, but they do bump somehow, and it's more honest--more pedagogically useful, more truthful--to arrange them in a loose, disconnected, provisional way than to deliver only the conclusions.”
― Sara Levine, Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: Work from 1970 to the Present

“The essay is a modest genre. It doesn't mean to change the world. Instead it says: let me tell you what happened to me.”
― Sara Levine, Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: Work from 1970 to the Present

“We all share a biology and deep drives, and what we have created -- civilization, courtesy, decency -- is a mesh that comes from those drives and also contains and tames them. Whatever feels good is not necessarily good. But what I learn is whatever is bad is not necessarily alien to me. Or to you.”
― Charles Bowden, Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: Work from 1970 to the Present

“One makes discoveries about oneself but more often one makes up discoveries.”
― Sara Levine, Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: Work from 1970 to the Present

“People approach writers, assuming we pull a perfect text out of our nose each time (well spelled). Spelling is the least of it.”
― Sara Levine, Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: Work from 1970 to the Present

“No doubt he is more than that, but we have no time to inquire.”
― Sara Levine, Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: Work from 1970 to the Present

“And found there one of those huge comprehensive anthologies of literature, the sort of thing which, on a bad day, can induce an inferiority complex...”
― Sara Levine, Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: Work from 1970 to the Present

“They are suspicious of humanism, nervous about too much style, and wary of public celebrations of the personal.”
― Sara Levine, Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: Work from 1970 to the Present