@parisreview profile picture
The Paris Review @parisreview

Quarterly literary magazine founded in 1953.

Joined September 2009
  • Tweets 123,611
  • Following 3,861
  • Followers 906,159
14,610 Photos and videos
Pinned Tweet
The Paris Review
@parisreview
Mar 10
Our Spring issue is here—featuring interviews with Sarah Schulman and Darryl Pinckney, prose by Tao Lin and Yu Hua, poetry by Inger Christensen and Joyelle McSweeney, art by Cauleen Smith, a cover by Cecily Brown, and more. buff.ly/fGxnHCT
17
66
137
31,434
“We have to learn how to live with frailties. The best people I know are inadequate and unashamed.” —Stanley Kunitz buff.ly/mzQJYA2

Stanley Kunitz, The Art of Poetry No. 29

“One critic wrote . . . that my poems sounded as though they had been translated from the Hungarian. I don’t know why, but somehow that made me feel quite lighthearted.”

theparisreview.org
3
12
1,397
“My father wasn’t insistent about me finishing college at the time. He knew that Hemingway and Faulkner didn’t go.” —Jim Harrison buff.ly/u0qwDWO

Jim Harrison, The Art of Fiction No. 104

“You don't write—an artist doesn't create, or very rarely creates—good art in support of different causes.”

theparisreview.org
2
20
2,665
We at the Review mourn the loss of David Hockney, who died this week at the age of eighty-eight. In memory of his life and work, we’ve unlocked his early “Notes for Illustrations: Grimm’s Fairy Tales” from the archive. buff.ly/MRMUGUl

Notes for Illustrations: Grimm’s Fairy Tales by David Hockney

     

theparisreview.org
1
9
20
2,089
“I’m afraid I wasn’t much of a student, but my casual reading was enormous.” —Conrad Aiken buff.ly/ldNoJCT

Conrad Aiken, The Art of Poetry No. 9

Recalling a dinner with T. S. Eliot: “He was wearing a cowboy hat, and we all got plastered … He couldn’t walk, for his ankles were crossed, so Valerie lifted him into the taxi.”

theparisreview.org
1
7
43
4,169
The writer Max Ross on a mysterious atlas in his father’s book collection, a one-of-a-kind map of an imagined universe described in glyphs the artist Timothy Ely invented from “his studies of ciphers, cryptographs, hieroglyphs, calligraphy, alchemy, Kabbalah, UFO communications in sci-fi novels, and other synthetic languages.” buff.ly/g00hSNS

The Vanishing Library: Timothy Ely’s Odd Little Book from Outer Space by Max Ross

June 9, 2026 – “The few words it contains are indecipherable, of no language. (The letters look Hebrew—if you don’t know Hebrew and have never seen Hebrew letters before.)”

theparisreview.org
1
8
2,164
“The rappers brought back rhyme. Critics try to put these kids down, but they are good writers.” —Ishmael Reed buff.ly/y5pRMCk

Ishmael Reed, The Art of Poetry No. 100

“I worked at a library and that’s where I first read James Baldwin. I think it was Notes of a Native Son. It stopped me cold.”

theparisreview.org
51
131
6,134
“In the medieval period it was common for translators to insert commentary on their theories and methods directly into the text,” as @becca_h_reed does in this unusual translation of Tere Dávila's “The Summer of Lion Meat” buff.ly/HmTEXQl

The Summer of Lion Meat by Tere Dávila and Rebecca Hanssens-Reed

June 8, 2026 – In the medieval period it was common for translators to insert commentary on their theories and methods directly into the text.

theparisreview.org
5
19
2,331
In a new diary, @gertsofficial chronicles a séance in unincorporated Florida, where her family tried to make contact with her great-uncle, who was murdered in 2024. buff.ly/X58UvOQ

A Diary from the Psychic Capital of the World by Greta Rainbow

June 12, 2026 – “The Psychic Capital of the World happens to be an unincorporated community in central Florida called Cassadaga.”

theparisreview.org
2
8
1,964
“Emily Dickinson is one of the greatest poets we have, and I don’t mean ‘we’ merely in America. I mean she is one of the greatest of poets.” —Susan Howe buff.ly/u7Kwhi2

Susan Howe, The Art of Poetry No. 97

“I often think of the space of a page as a stage, with words, letters, syllable characters moving across.”

theparisreview.org
2
20
68
5,294
“The night was mine. After everyone went to bed, I’d retreat to the bathroom with my notebook—I’d have woken people up if I’d used the typewriter.” —Ludmilla Petrushevskaya buff.ly/ub7rAiz

Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, The Art of Fiction No. 267

“Humor doesn’t cut it, or romance, or lyricism—no, no, no. Only terror works.”

theparisreview.org
3
20
2,811
“The question is, then, What the fuck do we do with our history? Do we try to hide it, like we’ve done so many times?” —Javier Cercas buff.ly/JO7akPx

Javier Cercas, The Art of Fiction No. 264

“Literature is pleasure and knowledge, like sex. It’s useful only so long as one doesn’t set out to make it useful.”

theparisreview.org
2
8
1,722
“The reason I stopped seeing my psychotherapist was that she wanted to talk about how I should get a teaching job, and I knew I wasn’t going to get one.” —Alice Notley buff.ly/ncrh39y

Alice Notley, The Art of Poetry No. 116

“Writing is not therapy. That’s the last thing it is. I still have my grief.”

theparisreview.org
6
40
3,746
“When you ask me to talk about my true memories, they’re covered over by the fictional versions of them that have been in my mind since the day I wrote the books. This makes it hard to distinguish.” —Gerald Murnane buff.ly/baUnUWa

Gerald Murnane, The Art of Fiction No. 266

“A fatal question—what are people reading these days? Never mind what people are reading these days. What should I be writing about is the fundamental question.”

theparisreview.org
4
23
5,057
“At sixteen, I memorized Keats’s odes and wrote them out, to see how it felt to write incontestably great poetry. … His language—it’s right at the edge of the cliff.” —Robert Glück buff.ly/cYFo0nz

Robert Glück, The Art of Fiction No. 260

“Unless you can say disorganization is a process, I confess I don’t have one.”

theparisreview.org
6
50
5,153
“With novels, like cakes, you never know.” —Robertson Davies buff.ly/B7WVceo

Robertson Davies, The Art of Fiction No. 107

On a “favorable” review in the Times of London: “[It] began with these chilling words: ‘To speak of a good novel from a Canadian writer sounds like the beginning of a bad joke.’”

theparisreview.org
9
30
3,436
“There may be nothing very fancy about the writing, but I like that. Plain.” —Lydia Davis buff.ly/qm72OS8

Lydia Davis, The Art of Fiction No. 227

“I find what happens in reality very interesting and I don’t find a great need to make up things.”

theparisreview.org
5
31
2,979
“The experience of understanding that you cannot take the entire work in at once, yet that there are places you can enter—I still hold onto that.” —Percival Everett buff.ly/L31MRtn

Percival Everett, The Art of Fiction No. 235

“What I want to do is write something that seems like it means something and doesn’t. I want to write a novel that even I don’t understand.”

theparisreview.org
5
17
2,200
“The novel imitates life, where the short story is bony, and cannot wander. It is essential art.” —William Trevor buff.ly/eesjI1D

William Trevor, The Art of Fiction No. 108

“English eccentricity has a suburban quality—it's like a very neatly trimmed garden in which you suddenly realize that the flower beds aren't what they seem to be.”

theparisreview.org
9
36
2,761
“With everything I write, there’s a feeling of having finally told the world what I really think, when I’d been hoping never to do that.” —Jamaica Kincaid buff.ly/HjGI97B

Jamaica Kincaid, The Art of Fiction No. 252

“I suppose that my work is always mourning something, the loss of a paradise—not the thing that comes after you die, but the thing that you had before.”

theparisreview.org
1
9
28
3,481
“If you keep your hands off them, your characters are bound to demonstrate the workings of the world in ways that take you by surprise.” —Deborah Eisenberg buff.ly/yPsEFvg

Deborah Eisenberg, The Art of Fiction No. 218

“I’m a person with virtually no feelings.”

theparisreview.org
5
35
3,419
Load more