Charles Baxter

Ethics is a dream.

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

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.

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.

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. .