Quotes by Steven Millhauser - Page 1 | QuoteForever

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God pity the poor novelist.
Steven Millhauser / Novelist
Novelists
Pity
Poor
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We know nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Steven Millhauser / Novelist
Absolutely Nothing
Knows
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I’m pleased by anything in myself that strikes me as not myself.
Steven Millhauser / Novelist
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If you fear phantoms, you're like a child frightened of seeing things in the dark.
Steven Millhauser / Novelist
Frightened
Phantoms
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All words are masks and the lovelier they are, the more they are meant to conceal.
Steven Millhauser / Novelist
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Stories, like conjuring tricks, are invented because history is inadequate for our dreams.
Steven Millhauser / Novelist
Dream
Conjuring
Stories
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I saw that I was in danger of becoming ordinary, and I understood that from now on I would have to be vigilant.
Steven Millhauser / Novelist
Becoming
Ordinary
Saws
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I had thought that words were instruments of precision. Now I know that they devour the world, leaving nothing in its place.
Steven Millhauser / Novelist
Leaving
Precision
World
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His ambition was to insert his dreams into the world, and if they were the wrong dreams, then he would dream them in solitude.
Steven Millhauser / Novelist
Dream
Ambition
Solitude
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In the long dusks of summer we walked the suburban streets through scents of maple and cut grass, waiting for something to happen.
Steven Millhauser / Novelist
Cutting
Long
Summer
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Perhaps sound is only an insanity of silence, a mad gibber of empty space grown fearful of listening to itself and hearing nothing.
Steven Millhauser / Novelist
Space
Mad
Silence
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Repetition for no reason is a sign of carelessness or pretentiousness, but there are plenty of good reasons to repeat words and phrases.
Steven Millhauser / Novelist
Carelessness
No Reason
Phrases
Plenty
Reasons
Repeat
Sign
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If you read a story with an 'I' or a 'he' or a 'she,' you're in familiar territory - but 'we' is mostly unexplored. I think of 'we' as an adventure.
Steven Millhauser / Novelist
Adventure
Familiar
Territory
Unexplored
Familiar Territory
Mostly
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Writing is a way of getting at the things most people would prefer to escape. Writing takes me to the center of life. That's my invitation to my readers as well.
Steven Millhauser / Novelist
Life Me People
Prefer
Center
Escape
Invitation
Readers
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I never write to disappear and escape. The truth is exactly the opposite. Most people strike me as escaping and disappearing in one way or another - into their jobs, their daily routines, their delusions about themselves and others.
Steven Millhauser / Novelist
Disappear
Truth Is
Opposite
Delusions
Escape
Routines
Strike
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I began by working in a study in an attic, but for many years, I've used a small room in a library. What matters to me isn't decor or comfort but only quiet. I need to hear the rhythms of phrases, the music of sentences. Any place that allows me to do that is good enough.
Steven Millhauser / Novelist
Comfort
Phrases
Quiet
Sentences
Good Music Me
Good Music Enough
Attic
Rhythms
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I think of childhood as an explosion of creativity. For most people, growing up and earning a living means leaving all that behind. But an artist never leaves that behind. Edwin Mullhouse was my way of exploring the child as artist and, under the guise of childhood, something larger.
Steven Millhauser / Novelist
Earning
Exploring
Guise
Larger
Leaves
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One thing I learned is that the park by the river in a recent story, 'Getting Closer,' is the same park by the river that appears for a moment near the end of 'The Eighth Voyage of Sinbad,' a story first published 23 years earlier. This echo at first irritated me, then pleased me deeply.
Steven Millhauser / Novelist
Irritated
One Thing
Appears
Closer
Deeply
Earlier
Echo
Eighth
Near
Park
Pleased
Published
Recent
River
Voyage
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What I dislike is conventional realism - a system of gestures, descriptions, psychological revelations that was once a vital way of representing the world but has become hackneyed through endless repetition. I'd argue that a conventional realist isn't a realist at all, but a falsifier of the real.
Steven Millhauser / Novelist
Conventional
Dislike
Gestures
Psychological
Realism
Repetition
Representing
Revelations
World Way Real
Descriptions
Vital
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When a story or part of a story comes to me, I turn it over in my mind a long time before starting to write. I might make notes or take long drives or who knows what. By the time I give myself permission to write, I know certain things, though not everything. I know where the story is headed, and I know certain crucial points along the way.
Steven Millhauser / Novelist
Crucial
Notes
Permission
Time Myself Mind
By The Time
Certain Things
Drives
Headed
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So imagine a fire going -- wood snapping the way it does when it’s a little green — the wind rattling the windows behind the curtains -- and one of those Chopin melodies that feel like sorrow and ecstasy all mixed together pouring from the keys -- and you have my idea of happiness. Or just reading, reading and lamplight, the sound of pages turning. And so you dare to be happy. You do that thing. You dare.
Steven Millhauser / Novelist
Fire
Keys
Reading
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That afternoon he told me that the difference between human beings and animals was that human beings were able to dream while awake. He said the purpose of books was to permit us to exercise that faculty. Art, he said, was a controlled madness… He said books weren't made of themes, which you could write essays about, but of images that inserted themselves into your brain and replaced what you were seeing with your eyes.
Steven Millhauser / Novelist
Art
Dream
Book
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But what struck me was the book-madness of the place--books lay scattered across the unmade bed and the top of a battered-looking desk, books stood in knee-high piles on the floor, books were crammed sideways and right side up in a narrow bookcase that rose higher than my head and leaned dangerously from the wall, books sat in stacks on top of a dingy dresser. The closet door was propped open by a pile of books, and from beneath the bed a book stuck out beside the toe of a maroon slipper.
Steven Millhauser / Novelist
Book
Doors
Wall
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And again it snowed, and again the sun came out. In the mornings on the way to the station Franklin counted the new snowmen that had sprung up mysteriously overnight or the old ones that had been stricken with disease and lay cracked apart-a head here, a broken body and three lumps of coal there-and one day he looked up from a piece of snow-colored rice paper and knew he was done. It was as simple as that: you bent over your work night after night, and one day you were done. Snow still lay in dirty streaks on the ground but clusters of yellow-green flowers hung from the sugar maples.
Steven Millhauser / Novelist
Morning
Dirty
Flower
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