Quotes by Charles Baxter

Ethics is a dream.

As the poet says, all happy couples are alike, its the unhappy ones who create the stories. Im no longer a story. Happiness has made me fade into real life.

When all the details fit in perfectly, something is probably wrong with the story.

When Im writing, Im waiting to see somebody, and Im waiting to hear them. Its almost like conjuring spirits out of the air, using your own imaginative instability.

The twentieth century has built up a powerful set of intellectual shortcuts and devices that help us defend ourselves against moments when clouds suddenly appear to think.

If you want to see the consequences of ideas, write a story. If you want to see the consequences of belief, write a story in which somebody is acting on the ideas or beliefs that she has.

Whats agitating about solitude is the inner voice telling you that you should be mated to somebody, that solitude is a mistake. The inner voice doesnt care about who you find. It just keeps pestering you, tormenting you--if you happen to be me--with homecoming queens first, then girls next door, and finally anybody who might be pleased to see you now and then at the dinner table and in bed on occasion. You look up from reading the newspaper and realize that no one loves you, and no one burns for you.

There is such a thing as the poetry of a mistake, and when you say, Mistakes were made, you deprive an action of its poetry, and you sound like a weasel.

Forget art. Put your trust in ice cream.

Everybody should read something. Otherwise we all fall down into the pit of ignorance. Many are down there. Some people fall in it forever. Their lives mean nothing. They should not exist. (From the short story, Charity.)

[T]he astonishing purity of pain, how it will not be mixed with any other sensation.

In truth, there are only two realities: the one for people who are in love or love each other, and the one for people who are standing outside all that.

When you’re in love you don’t have to do a damn thing. You can just be. You can just stay quiet in the world. You don’t have to move an inch.

My God, the corruptions of literature. It put all these notions into our heads.

The point is that although love may die, what is said on its behalf cannot be consumed by the passage of time, and forgiveness is everything.

You know, very few people really want to become individuals, he says. People claim they do, but they dont. They want to retain the invisibility of childhood anonymity forever. But thats not possible except in a police state. In an ordinary life, you have to become yourself.

After all, addiction is just the last stage of consumerism.

Needing something is not the same thing as being interested in the thing itself.

At least with pets, and for all I know, people too, intelligence and quick-wittedness have nothing to do with a talent for being loved, or being kind, nothing at all, less than nothing.

“As the poet says, all happy couples are alike, its the unhappy ones who create the stories. Im no longer a story. Happiness has made me fade into real life.”