Alan Shapiro > Quotes

“All works of nonfiction, or memoir, have to first and foremost be art before they can be true. They have to be artful first before they can be truthful... If you emphasize the truth-telling at the expense of art, nobody is going to be interested in it. And if you sacrifice truth in the name of art, you risk triviality. There's a constant balance between those two.”
― Alan Shapiro

“At first the wave of Persia’s fleet
rolled firm, but next, as our ships
jammed into the narrows and
no one could help any other and
our own bronze teeth bit into
our own strakes,
whole oarbanks shattered.”
― Alan Shapiro, The Complete Aeschylus: Volume II: Persians and Other Plays

“Sweetness and Night Long past indignant at the loss of dignity, almost amused by it, but not, every moment of the day a strip search in public, every breath a punishment for what? she couldn’t say, which makes her no less penitent, sitting forward, head bowed, in the chair she can’t get out of without help, which is itself another punishment,”
― Alan Shapiro, Life Pig