The Paris Review's Interview Archive

The Paris Review''s storied interview archive is now available online! You'll find uncommonly candid, sometimes controversial, and often surprising thoughts from the likes of Ralph Ellison, William Faulkner, Saul Bellow, Vladimir Nabokov, Joan Didion, James Baldwin, Maya Angelou, Martin Amis, and R. Crumb. The archive is available here , with some choice excerpts below.

Dorothy Parker, 1956

INTERVIEWER

Do you think Hollywood destroys the artist’s talent?

PARKER

No, no, no. I think nobody on earth writes down. Garbage though they turn out, Hollywood writers aren’t writing down. That is their best. If you’re going to write, don’t pretend to write down. It’s going to be the best you can do, and it’s the fact that it’s the best you can do that kills you. I want so much to write well, though I know I don’t, and that I didn’t make it. But during and at the end of my life, I will adore those who have.

T.C. Boyle, 2000

INTERVIEWER

When did you first begin writing?

T. C. BOYLE

In a class in college. As a junior I walked into an elective class that consisted of all the lame, halt, and disaffected crazies on campus, one of whom was a reincarnated Egyptian princess and had the tattoo on her ankle to prove it. Hallelujah, I thought, this is just where I belong.

Stephen King, 2006

INTERVIEWER

Is there really much of a difference, then, between serious popular fiction and literary fiction?

KING

The real breaking point comes when you ask whether a book engages you on an emotional level. And once those levers start to get pushed, many of the serious critics start to shake their heads and say, No. To me, it all goes back to this idea held by a lot of people who analyze literature for a living, who say, If we let the rabble in, then they’ll see that anybody can do this, that it’s accessible to anyone. And then what are we doing here?

Mary Karr, 2009

People who didn’t live pre-Internet can’t grasp how devoid of ideas life in my hometown was. I stopped in the middle of the SAT to memorize a poem, because I thought, This is a great work of art and I’ll never see it again.

-Megan