Rick Moody on studying with Angela Carter at Brown University, in the Age: “On the first day, the class was overenrolled. She basically got it down to 14 people by scaring people out of the room. Some guy raised his hand and said, ‘Well, what’s your work like anyway?’ She said, in her mild-mannered way, ‘My work cuts like a steel blade at the base of a man’s penis’.”
Kate Christensen, on winning the PEN/Faulkner award (and being only the fourth woman to do so in 28 years), at NPR: “For writers and artists, it’s always a balancing act between wanting to be the center of attention and wanting to be invisible and watch what’s going on,” she says. “It makes you vulnerable to win an award. It’s nice to get the attention, but your neck is stuck out.”
Toni Morrison, clarifying that “first black President” statement, in Time: “People misunderstood that phrase. I was deploring the way in which President Clinton was being treated, vis-à-vis the sex scandal that was surrounding him. I said he was being treated like a black on the street, already guilty, already a perp. I have no idea what his real instincts are, in terms of race.”
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