The Paris Review

Our Spring issue is here—featuring interviews with Sarah Schulman and Darryl Pinckney, prose by Tao Lin and Yu Hua, poetry by Inger Christensen and Joyelle McSweeney, art by Cauleen Smith, a cover by Cecily Brown, and more. buff.ly/fGxnHCT

“I want fresh water to always be flowing into the poem, like in a spring-fed lake.” —Henri Cole buff.ly/nXsrlE0

“Time, which is your enemy in almost everything in this life, is your friend in writing.” —Tobias Wolff buff.ly/pTvrpVd

“The general reading public has no idea of what goes into a short story because it is literally short and can give the impression that the writer sat down and rattled the thing out in an hour or two.” —Annie Proulx buff.ly/hHFK0OY

“Every one of my critics will tell you that I am a generalist spread far too thin.” —George Steiner buff.ly/0VSjQiF

“I work very hard in subsequent revisions to remove the writerly-ness from it.” —Toni Morrison buff.ly/bPt65ZM

“Some people say, I don’t read fiction because it isn’t real. This is incredibly naive.” —Ursula K. Le Guin buff.ly/DTvON0b

“When I teach creative writing, I always speak about how you have to learn how to read your work.” —Toni Morrison buff.ly/bPt65ZM

I interviewed Nilo Cruz for @parisreview about how he wrote an opera based on Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, and what happens to love after death theparisreview.org/blog/2026/04/2…

“My page one can end up a year later as page two hundred, if it’s even still around.” —Philip Roth buff.ly/xu3Lu0M

“Before I begin to work I pull out the phone and it stays out until I’m ready to plug it in again.” —Nadine Gordimer buff.ly/RWtngd5

“Conformity bores me, as does predictability. I want stability in my life, sure, but on my own terms. And I don’t go to poems for that stability.” —Carl Phillips buff.ly/zeuSdV4

“Poems get to the point where they are stronger than you are.” —Ted Hughes buff.ly/AeXU0Yo

“The idea that you have arrived at some point where you’ve said it all, that’s horrendous. Who would want that?” —Nathaniel Mackey buff.ly/ount5Pc

“In the history of literature there has been only one change: the passage from orality to writing.” —Ismail Kadare buff.ly/7uVXpY8

“Fiction is not limited by rules. I cannot give you fifteen pages of a story and have you tell me why it’s not a story.” —Percival Everett buff.ly/49La6Er

“Poetry has been the longest pleasure of my life. It literally and figuratively saved my life.” —Shirley Hazzard buff.ly/vKFZ4iS

“There is nothing more mine than my writing.” —Fran Lebowitz buff.ly/7FlE4bA

“My deepest anxieties were awakened, or reactivated, through Kafka.” —Eugene Ionesco buff.ly/1bV00G8

“As you grow older you realize that there are bad lines in ‘King Lear’ and it has survived.” —Robert Gottlieb buff.ly/CI18W6L

“How consoling—that this stuff goes on and that you can keep thinking about it and making that into something on the page.” —Anne Carson buff.ly/sacUJES