Latest Jess Walter Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• You probably have to trust that your work is following certain themes and certain movements, but then the rest is a kind of piecing together so that the whole becomes larger than the parts.

  Jess Walter

  Together, Movement, Kind

  Source: therumpus.net

• I love humor in writing, so I've written to the thing that's funny, there's the joke, but then I just kept going. I started thinking about all the bikes I've had stolen, and that got me thinking about crime, and that got me thinking about the city I'm in.

  Jess Walter

  Writing, Thinking, Cities

  Source: therumpus.net

• I quickly decided my zombies weren't really zombies. It was instead something you called people who were on this club drug, who then exhibited aggressive behaviors. And then like everyone who writes about zombies, I found it was so much fun.

  Jess Walter

  Fun, Writing, People

  Source: therumpus.net

• It's once I discover the people inside that the story really gets going, and then the formal invention becomes less important. It's just the way in; it's the door; and then what's behind it is always some kind of people, which I think probably makes me more in the tradition of realistic fiction because that's usually what I'm interested in, the people.

  Jess Walter

  Thinking, Doors, People

  Source: therumpus.net

• I'm certainly eclectic in my writing.

  Jess Walter

  Writing, Eclectic

  Source: therumpus.net

• The form is so malleable and can do so many things.

  Jess Walter

  Form, Can Do

  Source: therumpus.net

• The neighborhoods I grew up in were poor and full of drug users. I don't think you have to look that hard to find those kinds of lives. But I also don't think you have to have experienced it really close to be able to empathize.

  Jess Walter

  Thinking, Drug, Looks

  Source: therumpus.net

• For many people it's Facebook, or sports on TV, whatever it is. I have my own demons that I battle. But whatever they are, you wish you could not do them. For most of us it's "I cannot get off Facebook." But imagine that your demon has you living on the street. I don't think those compulsions and obsessions are that different.

  Jess Walter

  Sports, Thinking, People

  Source: therumpus.net

• If you come from money and you become an addict, you go to the Betty Ford Clinic, you get treatment. If you're living on the street and you're an addict, it's much harder to find your way out.

  Jess Walter

  Way, Treatment, Harder

  Source: therumpus.net

• You take something from your past that you're somewhat ashamed about and you write about it from another character's point of view.

  Jess Walter

  Writing, Character, Past

  Source: therumpus.net

• I don't know a family that isn't touched by some sort of addiction.

  Jess Walter

  Addiction, Knows, Touched

  Source: therumpus.net

• I realized the structure in a collection is how they're put together. Structuring the collection became the art of it for me. Because the stories had all been written.

  Jess Walter

  Art, Together, Stories

  Source: therumpus.net

• I've been a dad since I was nineteen, so I think a lot about fatherhood and the power of that sacrifice in your life.

  Jess Walter

  Dad, Sacrifice, Thinking

  Source: therumpus.net

• The stories tend to be what I work on when I'm stuck. Something will just pop into my head and I'll think that's more of a story.

  Jess Walter

  Thinking, Stories, Pops

  Source: therumpus.net

• Because I'm a novelist, I think in terms of structure. The way I keep going is through structure. It's what inspires me and pushes me through.

  Jess Walter

  Thinking, Inspire, Novelists

  Source: therumpus.net

• I think the path to becoming a writer has become more through the novel. It's easier to get a novel published than a book of stories, obviously, especially through big publishers.

  Jess Walter

  Book, Thinking, Stories

  Source: therumpus.net

• I wrote short stories for seven years and used to mail them out. You couldn't send them by e-mail. I called them manila boomerangs. I'd seal the self-addressed stamped envelope inside an envelope and I'd mail it off, and it would come back six weeks later with a rejection letter in it.

  Jess Walter

  Self, Years, Rejection

  Source: therumpus.net

• I'm a professional. So before I published any novels, I'd always been writing stories.

  Jess Walter

  Writing, Writing Stories, Stories

  Source: therumpus.net

• The first fiction I ever wrote was short stories. I was writing short stories in my late teens and early twenties, and I think it's how you teach yourself to write.

  Jess Walter

  Writing, Thinking, Twenties

  Source: therumpus.net