Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The VW doesn’t make you think of Hitler and genocide. It’s a breast on wheels, a puffy little dream.
I'm a kind person; I don't have a really nihilist streak in me, but I respond to that kind of humour.
I love the novels of Didion and Bret Ellis and consider them L.A. writers because they write about L.A.
A lot of politics in art is just institutional critique, which, in my opinion, is not all that political.
I steer clear of books with ugly covers. And ones that are touted as 'sweeping,' 'tender' or 'universal.'
I'm releasing myself from the responsibility of claiming to know when something is good and when it isn't.
I don't believe in the model of pure inspiration. All of my creative work stems from a dialogue with others.
The kids I knew growing up who worked on bikes all loved the smell of gas. It is the liquid agent for speed.
If a writer is always trying to keep a narrator emitting a tone of complete knowingness, it can become false.
For me, everything about the telling is guided by tone. It's a bit mysterious; it's either there, or it isn't.
It's through engagement with the world, and not separation from it, that something with meaning gets produced.
For me, art is not 'brooding.' It comes from someplace that is more fun and that has a kind of electricity to it.
Art is something special because it can come up with a way of approaching the truth that is a little to the side.
The great thing about writing is that it has to work without that invisible layer of the reader's added knowledge.
Artists complain about the art world until it starts rubbing their back, then they have their love affair with it.
From 'Midnight Cowboy' to 'Taxi Driver' is a brief era whose grit, beauty, and violence has been quite mythologized.
I'm not sure if you can strive your way into a career as a novelist. You have to write books; there are no short cuts.
Even if it happened in real life - and oftentimes, especially if it happened in real life - it might not work in fiction.
I don't quite see the 20th century as one of chaos. But I believe in certain inevitable outcomes of a materialist nature.
In short, I'm pretty suspicious of the idea that there's a real and true and authentic world, and then a bunch of false ones.
The desire for love is universal but that has never meant it’s worthy of respect. It’s not admirable to want love, it just is.
I like to think each writer is doing his or her part. Feeding the lake, as Jean Rhys said. And maybe there are different lakes.
My mother told me many stories about her childhood in Cuba. Living there had a profound impact on her and how she regards herself.
I don't have any outside view of myself, and if I did, I would probably be creatively inhibited. I just write in the way that I write.
People who experience themselves as authentic are also experiencing themselves as myth, but that's not the narrative they're going with.
Eventually, I grew out of my interest in motorcycles because they're quite dangerous. I don't ride them anymore. But I have this history.
It's a cliche, and in a way it's a conservative idea about fiction, but I did learn the hard way that plot does need to dictate the story.
I'm not the kind of person who would want to go into a studio and manage other people and listen to the phone ringing. That's alien to me.
I think any time you deal with humans and the way they exploit one another and cause pain you are in the realm of politics, on some level.
Making art was really about the problem of the soul, of losing it. It was a technique for inhabiting the world. For not dissolving into it.
The Seventies seemed like this really open time. There were a lot of strong women characters deciding what kind of artists they wanted to be.
My natural orientation has never been among a community of writers, really. For some reason my social world has always been in the art world.
I have spent a lot of time in the art world, and I guess I do listen to how people speak. I'm interested in what they say and how they say it.
The social dimension of the art world is fascinating to me, but I also want to entertain the reader, so I will let a character say something funny.
I don't read for plot, a story 'about' this or that. There must be some kind of philosophical depth rendered into the language, something happening.
I had always wanted to include images in a novel, and with my first book, 'Telex From Cuba,' I made an elaborate website that is basically all images.
Writing a first novel was an arduous crash course. I learned so much in the six years it took me to write it, mostly technical things pertaining to craft.
I got all my politics and culture and my sense of the great wide world of adults from 'Mad Magazine.' But all other comic books literally gave me a headache.
One of the strategies for doing first-person is to make the narrator very knowing, so that the reader is with somebody who has a take on everything they observe.
I'm very interested in the idea of a large group of people who come together quite suddenly, but not illogically, for reasons that could not have been anticipated.
Our parents had Ph.D.s, but we were dirty ragamuffin children. I spent a huge amount of time by myself. I daydreamed and learned how to be alone and not be lonely.
I don't really have those kinds of intentions when I write a scene. I try to follow the internal logic of the fiction, rather than make an argument or an assertion.
You have time. Meaning don't use it, but pass through time in patience, waiting for something to come. Prepare for its arrival. Don't rush to meet it. Be a conduit.
I didn't think of the narrative as making a judgment. It didn't occur to me the reader would either, but that doesn't mean it isn't possible there would be that risk.
Happiness is a mysterious concept. It seems to work best as futurity: at that point I will be happy, et cetera. I feel like I experience small pieces of joy day to day.
When I see someone for the first time in a while, and they ask, 'How have you been?' or 'What have you been up to?', it's politeness but a bit of a conversation stopper.
Every person has a range. In fiction, you get to be it all. I’m as much the men in my book as I am the women. I write how I write and there is no mission to stake a claim.
Art is like a stock with a decent return for people in finance, and they get to feel like they are involved with culture, spend time with artists, as part of their dividend.
It's no secret that Cuba is a typical Latin American culture in that it has a fair amount of homophobia. Homosexuals have been notoriously persecuted under Fidel's government.
It's really a misconception to identify the writer with the main character, given that the author creates all the characters in the book. In certain ways, I'm every character.