More Writers & Company: New Conversations with CBC Radio’s Eleanor Wachtel

Eleanor Wachtel

“If we have any role at all, I think it’s the role of optimism, not blind or stupid optimism, but the kind which is meaningful, one that is rather close to that notion of the world which is not perfect, but which can be improved.”

The late and great Chinua Achebe on the meaning of life and the writer’s responsibility in society – a beautiful 1994 interview:

Conversations with Maya Angelou 

“Life loves the liver of it. You must live and life will be good to you.”

As a final farewell to Maya Angelou, the beloved writer on identity and the meaning of life:

Conversations with Picasso

Brassaï

Picasso on success and why you should never compromise in your art:

Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut

“We have such a young culture that there is an opportunity to contribute wonderful new myths to it, which will be accepted.”

A lost 1974 interview with Kurt Vonnegut, in which the beloved author discusses the writer’s responsibility, the limitations of our brain, and why the universe exists:

Susan Sontag: The Complete Rolling Stone Interview

Jonathan Cott

“If I had to choose between the Doors and Dostoyevsky, then — of course — I’d choose Dostoyevsky… But do I have to choose?”

Susan Sontag’s timeless, timelier than ever thoughts on how the false divide between “high” and pop culture limits us and robs our lives of richness

How to Read a Novelist

John Freeman

“True storytellers write not because they can but because they have to. There is something they want to say about the world that can only be said in a story.”

What makes a great interview:

Conversations with David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace

“You don’t have to think very hard to realize that our dread of both relationships and loneliness … has to do with angst about death, the recognition that I’m going to die, and die very much alone, and the rest of the world is going to go merrily on without me.”

A revealing and prescient conversation with young David Foster Wallace

Seven Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges

Fernando Sorrentino

“A writer’s work is the product of laziness, you see. A writer’s work essentially consists of taking his mind off things, of thinking about something else, of daydreaming, of not being in any hurry to go to sleep but to imagine something … And then comes the actual writing, and that’s his trade. That is, I don’t think the two things are incompatible. Besides, I think that when one is writing something that’s more or less good, one doesn’t feel it to be a chore; one feels it to be a form of amusement. A form of amusement that doesn’t exclude the use of intelligence.”

Borges on writing – collected wisdom from his most candid interviews:

Charles Bukowski: Sunlight Here I Am: Interviews and Encounters 1963-1993

David Stephen Calonne

“Writing is like going to bed with a beautiful woman and afterwards she gets up, goes to her purse and gives me a handful of money.”

Bukowski on writing, plus his insane daily routine.

Conversations with Maya Angelou

“You only are free when you realize you belong no place — you belong every place — no place at all.”

Maya Angelou in conversation with Bill Moyers on freedom:

How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer

Debbie Millman

“If I get up every day with the optimism that I have the capacity for growth, then that’s success for me.”

Legendary graphic designer Paula Scher on why creativity works like a slot machine:

Conversations with Artists

Selden Rodman

“Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is.”

Jackson Pollock, in a rare interview shortly before his death, on art and morality:

Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace

David Lipsky

In early 1996, journalist David Lipsky 34-year-old David Foster Wallace on the last leg of his tour for his breakout novel, Infinite Jest for an ambitious Rolling Stone interview. The feature was never published, but in 2010, some 14 years after the road trip and two years after Wallace’s suicide, Lipsky released the transcript in the profound, wildly revealing Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace.