Literary Birthday – 28 April – Diane Johnson

Happy Birthday, Diane Johnson, born 28 April 1934.

Diane Johnson Quotes

1. Women have the feeling that since they didn’t make the rules, the rules have nothing to do with them.
2. A novel’s whole pattern is rarely apparent at the outset of writing, or even at the end; that is when the writer finds out what a novel is about, and the job becomes one of understanding and deepening or sharpening what is already written. That is finding the theme.
3. It didn’t seem fair that you could not prevent being the object of other people’s emotions, you were not safe from their hate–or from their love, for that matter.
4. The Novelist, afraid his ideas may be foolish, slyly puts them in the mouth of some other fool and reserves the right to disavow them.
5. Laughter is the jam on the toast of life. It adds flavour, keeps it from being too dry, and makes it easier to swallow.

Diane Johnson is an American novelist and essayist. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Persian Nights in 1988. Other books include L’Affaire, Le Mariage, and Le Divorce for which she was a National Book Award finalist and the winner of the California Book Awards gold medal for fiction.

by Amanda Patterson

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