Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
My first attempt at writing a novel was horrible. I had to throw it away. But I stuck with the idea, which is what became 'The Invisible Circus.'
The music industry is an interesting lens through which to look at change, because it has had such a difficult time adjusting to the digital age.
I should say, I don't write about myself or my life. So for me, in fiction, it's always been about what I can dream up, that feels far away from me.
I love how close New York is to Europe; I love the seasons, and I don't think I could live without them. They're the way I track the passage of time.
So I feel that lack of qualification. And I'm scared. And I have a tendency to think things may not/probably won't work out. That's my basic mindset.
Both my own process and that of the publishing industry are just too slow to do anything other than play catch-up when it comes to anticipating change.
As a journalist, I have wanted very much to find a way to write about the music industry, and it's been frustrating to me that that's never worked out.
The problem was precision, perfection; the problem was digitization, which sucked the life out of everything that got smeared through its microscopic mesh.
I'm just interested in serialization in fiction. I'm fascinated by it. I love the 19th-century novels. I'm interested in ways to bring that back to fiction.
Her only thought was of getting away, as if she were carrying a live grenade from inside the house, so that when it exploded, it would destroy just herself.
Technology makes everyone feel old. A laptop is old after two years. Someone always has something newer. Everyone seems to feel obsolete now, even the young.
I know I'm famous and irresitible - a combination whose properties closely resemble radioactivity - and I know that you in this room are helpless against me.
In the case of 'Goon Squad,' which sold slowly for a long time despite the good reviews, those 'best of 2010' lists were pivotal, and made the book really sell.
some mornings... I sit at the kitchen table shaking salt into the hairs on my arm, and a feeling shoves up in me: it's finished. Everything went past without me.
I was a stepchild in two different families. The hardest thing about being a stepchild is you know that in some way everything would be easier if you didnt exist.
I was a stepchild in two different families. The hardest thing about being a stepchild is you know that in some way everything would be easier if you didn't exist.
I’m sorry and I believe in you and I’ll always be near you, protecting you, and I will never leave you, I’ll be curled around your heart for the rest of your life.
Sometimes I'll watch teenagers and find myself not quite believing I'm older than they are - even wondering, delusionally, if they can see any difference between us.
Training readers to expect a voice or subject matter from me would interfere with the reinvention I crave. At the same time, I feel almost too able to disappear at times.
Reading is a lot like eating for me: If I try to read a book I'm not hungry for, I won't enjoy it, but if I wait until I have a real appetite for something, I'll devour it.
When I'm not writing, I feel an awareness that something's missing. If I go a long time, it becomes worse. I become depressed. There's something vital that's not happening.
I’m like America ” he said. Stephanie swung around to look at him unnerved. “What are you talking about ” she said. “Are you off your meds ” “Our hands are dirty ” Jules said.
Comparison is painful. Don't be cowed by other people's pretty pictures. When you feel unimpressive, or irrelevant, that has nothing to do with what you're actually capable of.
I'm embarrassed to say this, but I shy away from memoirs. My feeling is always that I'm saving them for later, so I guess that means I'll reach a point when I read nothing else.
We lie. That's what we do. You're selling me a line of bullshit and you want me to sell you a line of bullshit back so you can write a major line of bullshit and be paid for it.
The answers were maddeningly absent—it was like trying to remember a song that you knew made you feel a certain way, without a title, artist, or even a few bars to bring it back.
Between books, I have to throw out everything I did before, because the tools I've used to write the previous book will not only not work for the next project, they will ruin it.
Sometimes I imagine myself looking back on right now and I think like where will I be standing when I look back Will right now look like the beginning of a great life or... or what
I think the one thing that's changed over time is that I've come to realise, as a fiction writer, the fact that I don't think it will work out, doesn't mean that it actually won't.
Because you can't write habitually and well all the time, you have to be willing to write badly. That's how you get the regularity that enables you to be present for the good stuff.
It's not that I sit down and write great stuff without thinking, not at all. Most of it is terrible. But the stuff that feels fun and fresh to me tends to happen fairly unthinkingly.
Kathy was a Republican, one of those people who used the unforgivable phrase "meant to be"--usually when describing her own good fortune or the disasters that had befallen other people.
If I had a view like this to look down on every day, I would have the energy and inspiration to conquer the world. The trouble is, when you most need such a view, no one gives it to you.
I wasn't a kid who wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a doctor. I was kind of morbid. I was really into the body and how it could go wrong. I wanted to dig up bodies from the graveyard.
I listened to classic rock and roll, and punk rock. 'Goon Squad' provides a pretty accurate playlist of my teenage years, though it leaves out 'The Who,' which was my absolute favorite band.
To some degree, we're all thinking about the same things. It's the zeitgeist. The trick, in a way, as a writer, is to hope that your interests in some sense link up with the culture around you.
Structural dissatisfaction: Returning to circumstances that once pleased you, after having experienced a more thrilling or opulent way of life, and finding that you can no longer tolerate them.
After 9/11, the U.S. seemed vulnerable for the first time in a long time. We were no longer the superpower that no other country could touch. I thought, 'When and how did that dominance begin?'
There's a fine line between thinking about somebody and thinking about not thinking about somebody, but I have the patience and the self-control to walk that line for hours - days, if I have to.
I'm partial to epic poetry, which might be surprising given that I don't write poetry at all. The combination of rollicking storytelling with musical language seems to me the highest achievement.
My mom used to say that if someone woke her up in the middle of the night and asked how old she was, she'd answer 27. Hearing her, I'd think, 'That's ridiculous; your job as my mom is to be old.'
I think the big lesson I've learned is that it's very hard to write satire in America because almost immediately, whatever you've thought of turns out to come true, or sometimes it already was true.
I had this idea that I could hire myself out as a person to go on archeological digs and dig, without any training! I actually wrote to a number of archeology departments and offered up my services.
One of my strengths as a writer is that I'm a good problem-solver. I write these unthinking, ungoverned first drafts. The project for me always is to turn that instinctive stuff into pages that work.
I often felt like that Mr. Magoo figure in the cartoon, who just wanders through traffic, and somehow it never hits him. I kind of feel that way about my whole childhood: Why do I have a normal life?
What lists and awards don't measure - and I feel this strongly - is the lasting value of any work of art. They're a snapshot of a moment, and one should always consider their judgments in that context.
When I had my first child, I didn't write for a year, and I felt when I tried to start again I might actually not be able to do it anymore. I really could not do it well, and I felt out of sorts with it.
My last novel, 'The Keep,' was very explicitly technological, about the quality of living in a state constantly surrounded by disembodied presences, and I was thinking very much about the online experience.
It's our job as fiction writers to provide a delight that nothing else can - to such a degree that people have no choice but to read our work. Now that's a very tall order, if not impossible. But why not try?
Sometimes I forget I have children, which is very strange. I feel guilty about it, as if my inattention will cause something to happen to them, even when I'm not responsible for them - that God will punish me.