CAROLYN CHUTE

A dangerous chasm in the classes is alive and well in the United States of America. Don’t let anybody tell you it’s not.

We need to stay together, to spread the truth like religion. It's a lonely, scary road, and we've got to walk it together.

People say, 'Well, why don't they get another job, why don't they pick themselves up by their bootstraps?' Well, the people that say that probably have the kind of jobs where they don't work that hard, so maybe they could have another job.

Today's world is very cruel.

When I'm not writing, I do a lot of research reading on the shape of civilization. Fiction can be a lot of different things... but I feel like it's my job to write about the way things are.

My people are mostly underweight or overweight - however it is they turned out, like good bread. Bring back the hunched-over people... Bring back humanity.

I love a big book, but it's what most people like which makes commerce sing.

Today, somewhere in America, more foreclosures. More auctions. Another farmer plots his own death. And another. There is an art to making your death by combine look like an accident.

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

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.

When people do come face to face with each other as human beings, they begin to understand each other better.

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

Your community is your survival.

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

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

With upper- and middle-class lawns, there's more hidden, whereas with working-class or poor lawns, there's more out to see. It just sits right out there. Very honest. Like the people.

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

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

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 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.

When I write, I just let my characters go, the way I let life go.

I like starting projects in January. That's the best time to start something. It's so inward.

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.

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

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.