Quote of the Day (Alice McDermott, on a ‘Contrarian’ Approach to Writing Historical Fiction)

“I think many of us who write fiction are contrarians at heart. You know, the world says, ‘This is the this is the way the world is’ and we say, ‘Oh, no. No, we're going to make up our own world, even if it feels like the real world. We're going to correct it. We're going to tell it better. We're going to tell the story of history in a more interesting way.”—American novelist Alice McDermott, in conversation with David Rubenstein on “America’s Book Club,” C-SPAN, original air date Apr 19, 2026

The image accompanying this post was taken by Slowking4, showing Alice McDermott reading at the 2018 Gaithersburg Book Festival, May 19, 2018.