Author

My life in the town I grew up in was much quieter than 'The End of Vandalism.' Part of the reason I think I wrote it was because it was too damn quiet when I was young, and I wanted people to come out and talk. And they do. There's so much dialogue in 'The End of Vandalism.'

From Tom Drury

I don't think of my characters as bumbling. I think that trouble is what drives a novel, both big troubles and small troubles, and whatever people try to do in life, there are a series of stumbling-blocks in the way, and I think that makes for interesting reading. I think of them as doing their best with the roadblocks that they're given.

From Tom Drury

Rather than writing about international events, I write about individual lives. There is elation and sadness, death and birth, love and jealousy, co-operation and betrayal. All the great emotional transactions that happen wherever people come together.

From Tom Drury

I really, honest to God, didn't know what to read until I was out of college and living in Boston, and someone said, 'Well, why don't you read Hemingway?' And I thought, 'OK. I guess I'll try this Hemingway fellow.'

From Tom Drury

Very few things are totally devoid of any possibility of humor. If you are aware of that possibility and alive to the scene becoming that way, then it just happens naturally. That's what I feel living is like, too. I find a lot of things that make me smile or make me laugh over the course of the day.

From Tom Drury

I don't do nonfiction anymore. Eventually, you just feel constrained by the facts. You want to go where the words take you, and people's actual lives don't always conform. And you can't know them that well.

From Tom Drury

I think, most of us, when we look back over our lives, see perhaps moments when everything was dangerous and precarious. We're making all these mistakes, and yet somehow we make it through. It's the making it through that that interests me. To go through the valley of trouble and come out the other side. That's what we all have to do.

From Tom Drury

I grew up in Swaledale, in Iowa. Its population was 220 when I was growing up, and it's probably 150 now. I lived in town and sometimes worked on the farms outside of town in the summers.

From Tom Drury

My dad read, I think, the Perry Mason mysteries and Zane Grey and some humor compendiums... And then at one point, the bookmobile started coming to town. That was really cool. I mean, that was when I read my first Raymond Carver story. I think that was probably 1969 or so. I must have been 13.

From Tom Drury

I think the book that really kind of woke me up a little bit when I was starting to write was 'Winesburg, Ohio' by Sherwood Anderson. I was in grad school at Brown, going for an M.A. in creative writing. Those stories seemed to me to be doing away with pretty writing.

From Tom Drury

Tom Drury

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