All the stories I write come from someone I've met or some anecdote I've heard.

- Edith Pearlman

I have a skepticism toward romance. I believe that decency and companionship are, in the long run, more important in life.

- Edith Pearlman

I know a lot of single people who are not miserable as society tells them they're supposed to be.

- Edith Pearlman

I lived around the corner from Saul Bellow.

- Edith Pearlman

I wanted to publish a book simply to be buried with it; that's all I wanted. I had no ambition beyond that.

- Edith Pearlman

I was quite satisfied with my creative life. I've always had reinforcement from a small but devoted readership.

- Edith Pearlman

I wrote in the cellar for a number of years. I needed a private space, and it had a furnace, so it was always warm.

- Edith Pearlman

In the late 1950s, self-esteem hadn't yet been invented. High schools saw their sole mission as preparing students thoroughly for academic work.

- Edith Pearlman

The natural world is often bleak, but the language devoted to it is as careful as needlepoint and prophetic as well.

- Edith Pearlman

The ordinary experiences of aging alter and clarify your view of past, present, and future.

- Edith Pearlman

Tony Judt's remarkable 'The Memory Chalet' was written from the prison of mute immobility.

- Edith Pearlman

Architecture is undistinguished, sometimes derelict, but occasionally, as in 'Post and Beam,' there is something arresting in a setting... the building behind the Cathedral.

- Edith Pearlman

I always loved to read, and I wanted to be part of the project of literature. My physical longevity is due to luck, and my literary longevity is due to my physical longevity.

- Edith Pearlman

I think the computer is a hindrance to good writing because it is so tempting to leave what you've written. If you use a typewriter, you must retype if you make a mistake, and thus, you must re-examine every word.

- Edith Pearlman

The market town of Cheltenham, in Gloucestershire, was a popular 19th - century English spa. Its mineral springs were supposed to be good for you. This was before the invention of bran. In the 20th century, Cheltenham grew into an active municipality.

- Edith Pearlman

There's no rule I want to break or ever wanted to break - I find the conventional life gratifying - as long as I can sit at my typewriter, alone, for half a day.

- Edith Pearlman