Rick Bass Quotes

My life, I realize suddenly, is July. Childhood is June, and old age is August, but here it is, July, and my life, this year, is July inside of July.

- Rick Bass

Even the largest of my dreams and ambitions, I realize with increasing dismay, were puny, measly, compared to the object of my dreaming. I would not say my life to date has been built overmuch of compromise, but still, it surrounds me.

- Rick Bass

When you sign on to be an activist in northwest Montana, people in the grocery store will avoid eye contact, particularly if they're hanging out with outspoken opponents to your views.

- Rick Bass

I don't think I'm a natural novelist. Plot is definitely one of my weaker points. I've been working on it a long time, and it's not getting much better.

- Rick Bass

Fiction is harder for me than nonfiction - more gratifying, as a result, when it succeeds.

- Rick Bass

I've lost much of my heart and the spark or fire that once 'created,' or produced, the art of fiction.

- Rick Bass

The natural world is the only one we have. To try to not see the natural world - to put on blinders and avoid seeing it - would for me seem like a form of madness. I'm also interested in the way landscape shapes individuals and populations, and from that, cultures.

- Rick Bass

A novel that features real people is complicated, but in the end, that extra challenge is all for the good.

- Rick Bass

I think a novelist must be more tender with living or 'real' people. The moral imperative of having been entrusted with their story looms before you every day, in every sentence.

- Rick Bass

To not pursue the thing one wants would be a waste of one's life.

- Rick Bass