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An act of evil is the death of wonder
Joe Meno / Novelist
Acts Of Evil
Evil
Wonder
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People are just greedy animals, after all.
Joe Meno / Novelist
Animal
Greedy
People
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The world of evil is only as evil as we allow it to be.
Joe Meno / Novelist
Evil
World
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Imagination is a place where all the important answers live.
Joe Meno / Novelist
Imagination
Answers
Important
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Being decent is the only thing that matters in a terrible world like this.
Joe Meno / Novelist
Matter
Terrible
World
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I would say I have a complicated relationship with institutionalized religion.
Joe Meno / Novelist
Institutionalized
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The most important things in your life are almost always impossible to predict.
Joe Meno / Novelist
Important
Important Things
Impossible
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The longer human beings exist, it seems, the less likely we are to choose to be brave.
Joe Meno / Novelist
Brave
Humans
Seems
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Our worlds are so momentary. We are along all our lives and then go off that way as well.
Joe Meno / Novelist
Our World
Way
Wells
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When she cries, it is quiet, tearless, almost completely imperceptible: one more unheard prayer.
Joe Meno / Novelist
Cry
Prayer
Quiet
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What I've learned is that there is nothing in this life that does not fail to disappoint us, even our own deaths.
Joe Meno / Novelist
Doe
Failing
I've Learned
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The city glitters past us with its sharp edges, reminding us of how tiny, how weak, how totally unimportant we are.
Joe Meno / Novelist
Cities
Glitter
Past
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What makes my work my own is where I'm writing from. And I feel like I have a million stories to write about Chicago.
Joe Meno / Novelist
Chicago
Million
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Maybe it was better to just go on believing everything was OK, even when really bad things were just about to happen.
Joe Meno / Novelist
Believe
Goes On
Happens
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We have fun acting like this, acting like we are incredibly offended. Really, we are just bored to tears with everything.
Joe Meno / Novelist
Bored
Fun
Tears
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Maybe that's why people have friends at all. Not because they like them so much but because they don't make them feel so much worse.
Joe Meno / Novelist
Feels
People
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And it's exactly what's wrong with the radio. It's like...anything that tries to appeal to everybody always ends up sounding so cheap.
Joe Meno / Novelist
Ends
Radio
Trying
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Sex scenes in books are always like first person, from this male perspective and just about how awesome he is. It feels like such a fantasy.
Joe Meno / Novelist
Book
Perspective
Sex
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I was getting close to thirty and was trying on the idea of becoming more mature. I was reading more. I had gone out and bought a lot of shirts.
Joe Meno / Novelist
Ideas
Reading
Trying
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Where do you go when you die? Ha ha. Go on, go on and tell her, Billy." Billy smiles. "You become a little voice in someone's ear telling them that things will be alright.
Joe Meno / Novelist
Ears
Littles
Voice
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[Sex] is really awkward. You know you have expectations and then it's this great moment of connection and it's a surprise. But that's what so exciting about it is that sense of surprise.
Joe Meno / Novelist
Awkward
Expectations
Sex
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Beneath all of her thoughts and worries, beneath the complication of conflicting identities and needs, maybe it's as simple as loving the way some other person looks when they're sleeping.
Joe Meno / Novelist
Simple
Sleep
Worry
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Whether you work with a small or corporate press, the important thing is to have realistic expectations in terms of sales, promotion, and the work you have to do as an author promoting your novel.
Joe Meno / Novelist
Corporate
Promotion
Realistic
Work Your Important
Author
Sales
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It is what we see when we imagine what the afterlife must be like: our happiest triumphs, our most sincere moments, stolen from the seam of our lives, a respite just before the onset of imminent tragedy.
Joe Meno / Novelist
Afterlife
Tragedy
Triumph
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I tell my students that with a 200-page novel, you are going to write 100 pages that don't make the final cut. See it as an opportunity, although it took me a while to enjoy that 'lost in the woods' feeling.
Joe Meno / Novelist
Pages
Woods
Final Cut
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Do not be confused by what the natural world knows: We are all, in our own way, completely and totally alone. If love is real, it is complete and total failing of the intellect. It is utter self-destruction. It is pandemonium.
Joe Meno / Novelist
Confused
Love Is
Real
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There's slowly been a kind of shift in how we think about childhood. It's like childhood almost extends to 20 or 22 even after the end of college. When I was growing up, there was this expectation that you were on your own now.
Joe Meno / Novelist
Expectation
Slowly
Shift
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As an author on a corporate press, you have a lot less control over the finished product. I figure if I spend a couple years writing something, I want to be able to decide what the cover looks like and how it's going to be presented.
Joe Meno / Novelist
Corporate
Author
Couple Years
Cover
Finished Product
Presented
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When I was growing up in the '70s and '80s, by the time you were 16, you were kind of expected to be an adult. By the time we were 16 and able to drive, certainly by 17 or 18 and into college, you just had very little interaction with your parents.
Joe Meno / Novelist
Interaction
Adult
By The Time
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In my fiction, there's a lot that's borrowed from music. It's never like I'm taking a lyric, but more the mood of a particular song. 'The Boy Detective Fails' was like listening to 'Eleanor Rigby' by The Beatles, this very melancholy-but-poppy song.
Joe Meno / Novelist
Borrowed
Mood
Detective
Fails
Lyric
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I have a number of friends that try to live off their writing, and there's way more pressure for a hit or to write a certain type of book. You can't do a limited-edition short-story book with drawings unless you don't want to eat anything but ramen.
Joe Meno / Novelist
Drawings
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The boy detective thinks, The only thing all men have in common with one another is their inherent capacity to make mistakes. He reasons, But there is wonder in the attempt, knowing we are all destined to fall short, but forgoing reason and fear time and time again so deliberately.
Joe Meno / Novelist
Boys
Fall
Mistake
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My first book is really comparable to what I do now, where it's pretty surreal and strange at moments, but that being my first book - I wrote that when I was 22; it came out when I was 24 - and it was just really overwritten. I just didn't trust myself as a writer to say something once.
Joe Meno / Novelist
Moments
Strange
Surreal
Comparable
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I felt really lucky that 'Hairstyles Of The Damned' and 'The Boy Detective Fails' were both bestsellers, and I thought that donating the money from 'Demons' was a good way to respond to that. My favorite artists are the ones that are willing to experiment, even if it means a smaller audience.
Joe Meno / Novelist
Audience
Felt
Good Way
Hairstyles
Lucky
Willing
Boy
Artists
Both
Favorite
Respond
Demons
Detective
Experiment
Fails
Smaller
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Potluck Supper with Meeting to Follow is a marvel, deftly examining the connections between art and everyday life. Andy Sturdevant's lively, unique inquiries into trust fund kids, co-opted flags, gubernatorial portraits, art in second-tier cities, and Upper Midwestern esoterica, brim with both wit and humor.
Joe Meno / Novelist
Art
Kids
Unique
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Most novels put out by small or corporate presses don't really sell that well - usually a thousand copies or so. Working with a small press, you have to be willing to book reading tours, plan events, make contacts with other small press authors, and find new ways of getting word about your new work out there.
Joe Meno / Novelist
Copies
Corporate
New Ways
Thousand
Willing
Work Out
Authors
Work Your New
Tours
Contacts
Sell
Work New Your
Plan
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It is the strain of walking around the world-down the street, riding city buses and elevators, moving from place to place to place-and not knowing who might want to destroy you, who might like to fill your heart with poison, who might rob you and stab you, who might stand above you in the dark with a tarantula.
Joe Meno / Novelist
Dark
Heart
Moving
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Funny as hell, searingly honest, and urgently real, Sam Pink's Rontel puts to shame most modern fiction. His writing perfectly captures the bizarre parade that is Chicago, with all its gloriously odd and wonderful people. This book possesses both the nerve of Nelson Algren and the existential comedy of Albert Camus.
Joe Meno / Novelist
Book
Real
Writing
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I always feel super uncomfortable when it's like ah, there probably has to be a sex scene. I feel really bad and then always look around to see if anyone is watching me while I'm writing. I want to apologize to people who have to read those sex scenes, but I feel like it's part of the characters life, it's important.
Joe Meno / Novelist
Character
Sex
Writing
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I'm kind of interested in learning to learn and grow and challenge myself. I think I've been very fortunate in that my books are pretty different from one novel to the next. There's a lot of things that are similar but in terms of tone and the scale and how they interact with history and just the different styles as well.
Joe Meno / Novelist
Book
Challenges
Thinking
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After school the very next day, El Rey's mobile home was gone. I laid in bed and wondered what happens to people when they go, if they become like shadows, if they fade away when they disappear from your life. The only thing I could see was the broken picket fence. The only sound I could hear was the cry of birds being killed in the night.
Joe Meno / Novelist
Home
Night
School
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A book is actually a place, a place where we, as adults, still have the chance to engage in active imagining, translating word to image, connecting these images to memories, dreams, and larger ideas. Television, film, even the stage play, have already been imagined for us, but the book, in whatever form we choose to interact with it, forces us to complete it.
Joe Meno / Novelist
Dream
Book
Memories
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In novels you're able to occupy character's internal thoughts and it's really hard to do in a film or a TV show. When you're reading a character's thoughts or when it's in first person, you're reading kind of their own story, so you have the opportunity to see what makes that character complex or complicated. And to me that's what the whole point of fiction is.
Joe Meno / Novelist
Opportunity
Character
Reading
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Above the dirt of an unmarked grave and beneath the shadow of the abandoned refinery, the children would play their own made up games: Wild West Accountants! in which they would calculate the loss of a shipment of gold stolen from an imaginary stagecoach, or Recently Divorced Scientists! in which they would build a super-collider out of garbage to try and win back their recently lost loves.
Joe Meno / Novelist
Love
Children
Loss
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Sacrifice doesn't really exist on a national level anymore and that's a pretty new thing - most people aren't engaged nationally in some form of service and that changes the way you think about people in your country; you kind of think of them at a distance. And so there's that shift away from some sort of sacrifice - thinking of yourself as the most important thing in the world versus thinking of yourself as some sort of a whole.
Joe Meno / Novelist
Country
Distance
Thinking Of You
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I don't like the fact that no one has any imagination anymore. It doesn't pay to be a dreamer because all they really want you to do is answer the phone. Nobody wants you to think about anything new or use your brain or make anything interesting because everything important has already been made. America is over; it's done being brilliant.Everything genius has already been built, like all the great works of art have already been produced.
Joe Meno / Novelist
Art
Phones
Thinking
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The more I write, the more I've come to realize that books have a different place in our society than other media. Books are different from television or film because they ask you to finish the project. You have to be actively engaged to read a book. It's more like a blueprint. What it really is, is an opportunity... A book is a place where you're forced to use your imagination. I find it disappointing that you're not being asked to imagine more.
Joe Meno / Novelist
Opportunity
Book
Writing
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In our town there is a secret spot where you can still see the stars at night, believe it or not. It is the only spot like that left, unclouded by the dwindling skyscrapers rising nearby. It is a good place to go to walk and talk in whispers. Following the little hill that rises from the park to a small clearing which overlooks the statue of the armless general on his bronze steed, most of us later remember this spot as the first place we knew we might be in love.
Joe Meno / Novelist
Believe
Night
Stars
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