“Intense nostalgia breeds stories.” —Barry Hannah buff.ly/V5LlJnK

“I think I really wanted to be a short-story writer because I thought I was a man of short breath. I haven’t got the breath to write novels.” —V. S. Pritchett buff.ly/pjufs5U

Through Labor Day, you really can have it all when you subscribe to both The Paris Review and The New York Review of Books for a combined price of $119. buff.ly/peMXPe9

“I still don’t really know where a book comes from, like a child doesn’t know where babies come from.” —Rachel Cusk buff.ly/7tH66r0

“The twins had long harbored the desire to murder their father and make the modest point that greed and desecration do not always go unpunished.” From “After the Haiku Period” by Joy Williams in our new Summer issue. buff.ly/nlGDf6v

“It’s not easy being a writer in a partnership with another writer—especially when one person has more success and it’s obvious. It’s not so simple when men feel less than.” —Marie NDiaye buff.ly/uoOJIID

“But my daughters, young though they were, aspired to an existence more magnificent than ours, even if they got from Pierrot nearly everything they could wish for.” This week, we’ve unlocked “Monsieur Matin” by Marie NDiaye from the archive. buff.ly/J8AShT9

“ ‘It might be about your monkhood, but it’s a fashion show for your mom,’ he joked.” Simon Wu on a meditation retreat in New Jersey. buff.ly/2NSU4tl

“If I could say I was assigned something at birth, it would be to keep the soul fresh and clean, and to not let anything bring it down.” —Fanny Howe buff.ly/sYF3v1U

Sign up for the Redux newsletter to receive these pieces—by writers like Toni Morrison, Joan Didion, and Kazuo Ishiguro—to your inbox every Sunday morning. buff.ly/A24LYaB

“Life is a very bad novelist. It is chaotic and ludicrous.” —Javier Marías buff.ly/D43V3z3

“The sentence ‘I wish to be a writer’ would have been the kind of aspirational formula that was really beyond my self-conception.” —Elaine Scarry buff.ly/vOArYbn

“I am the kind of writer who rewrites and rewrites. I am very eager to correct everything.”—Kenzaburo Oe buff.ly/OWMYdUt

Love to read but hate to choose? Through Labor Day, you really can have it all when you subscribe to both The Paris Review and The New York Review of Books for a combined price of $119. buff.ly/peMXPe9

“The book begins vaguely, but as it becomes sharp, its presence signals that I should write about it, and this vision leads to the creation of a character who inhabits it and makes it believable.” —Marie NDiaye buff.ly/uoOJIID

“Our experiences are painful and sometimes annihilating, and if we have the strength to crawl out of and excavate that wreckage, we have to ask ourselves how to describe the truth of it.” —Hilton Als buff.ly/QYJwHNV

“I had my breakdown in New York. I lived there for two years. That was enough.” —Fanny Howe buff.ly/sYF3v1U

“In many conversations I realize that the thing that’s being said is really not the point at all.” —Claudia Rankine buff.ly/Ia061OI

“She noticed a drop of sweat, descending as though on a line—watched it slowly roll over the bump in his throat, heading for his collar. She wanted to put out her tongue and catch it, like a spot of rain.” From “The Fête” by Tom Crewe. buff.ly/eSe9R5F

“its bottoms mysterious ocean mirrors being that blaze that fail at spawned oxygen meters that rivet as spectral gladioli” “Torrential by Unknown Emergence” by Will Alexander in our Summer issue. buff.ly/8U34WD4