Steve Erickson Quotes - Page 2

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• One of the reasons I'm not so keen on people calling me an "experimental" writer is that it suggests the work is about the experiment, when it's always the opposite - any "experimentation" is dictated by the material.

  Steve Erickson

  Opposites, People, Calling

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• Strip away the morphing landscapes and rips in the space-time continuum, and my stories are about things that novels have always been about: love and sex and identity and memory and history and redemption.

  Steve Erickson

  Sex, Memories, Rip

  Source: therumpus.net

  5 Copy quote

• The form is always integral to the expression of the theme or to the sheer telling of the story, and sometimes the right form is apparent to me from the outset and sometimes it isn't.

  Steve Erickson

  Expression, Stories, Sometimes

  Source: therumpus.net

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• These days in particular it seems not only unavoidable but even irresponsible to not acknowledge politics in some way.

  Steve Erickson

  Way, These Days, Acknowledge

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Though energy and inspiration diminish, experience grows - the theme of parents and kids, for instance.

  Steve Erickson

  Inspiration, Kids, Parent

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• The material dictates the approach. I tell the stories in the way that feels natural to tell them. Certainly the last thing I want is to be "difficult."

  Steve Erickson

  Stories, Want, Way

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• I think most novelists I know, certainly including me, feel the novels choose them rather than vice-versa.

  Steve Erickson

  Thinking, Vices, Novelists

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• In the end I write the novels I need to write when I need to write them.

  Steve Erickson

  Writing, Needs, Ends

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• I'm my own "ideal reader" in the sense that I write novels that I would want to read.

  Steve Erickson

  Writing, Want, Novel

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• I write almost purely by instinct. I've never made an outline.

  Steve Erickson

  Writing, Instinct, Made

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• If you're a smart writer, you listen.

  Steve Erickson

  Smart, Ifs

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• Before I begin a novel I have a strong sense of at least one central character and how the story begins, and a more vague sense of where things may wind up, but at some point, if the novel is any good at all, the story and characters take on lives of their own and take over the book, and the writer has to be open to that.

  Steve Erickson

  Strong, Book, Character

  4 Copy quote

• I believe novels can have secrets from their author, a notion I imagine would appall Nabokov.

  Steve Erickson

  Believe, Secret, Imagine

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• To me experimental fiction ultimately is about the experiment and I'm not interested in experiments for their own sake, and if anything I've always steered a bit clear of that kind of thing, because it seems gimmicky to play around with text rather than do the work of telling a story and creating characters.

  Steve Erickson

  Character, Creating, Play

  "Steve Erickson and Zeroville: An Interview with a True American Original". Interview With Jeff VanderMeer, www.amazonbookreview.com. November 27, 2007.

  4 Copy quote

• Certainly the last thing I want is to be "difficult."

  Steve Erickson

  Want, Lasts, Difficult

  "Steve Erickson and Zeroville: An Interview with a True American Original". Interview With Jeff VanderMeer, www.amazonbookreview.com. November 27, 2007.

  4 Copy quote

• I tell the stories in the way that feels natural to tell them.

  Steve Erickson

  Stories, Way, Natural

  "Steve Erickson and Zeroville: An Interview with a True American Original". Interview With Jeff VanderMeer, www.amazonbookreview.com. November 27, 2007.

  4 Copy quote

• The material dictates the approach.

  Steve Erickson

  Approach, Materials

  "Steve Erickson and Zeroville: An Interview with a True American Original". Interview With Jeff VanderMeer, www.amazonbookreview.com. November 27, 2007.

  4 Copy quote

• My own personal experience has become more first-hand.

  Steve Erickson

  Hands, Firsts, My Own

  "Steve Erickson and Zeroville: An Interview with a True American Original". Interview With Jeff VanderMeer, www.amazonbookreview.com. November 27, 2007.

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• Being a man of taste and sophistication, the 80s were objectively, quantifiably, empirically, diagram-it-on-a-blackboard the worst decade in the history of recorded music.

  Steve Erickson

  Men, Taste, Diagrams

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• For better or worse I'm the writer I am today because of hearing those Dylan records. For better and most certainly not for worse, I'm the person I am today because of hearing Charles.

  Steve Erickson

  Records, Today, Hearing

  Source: therumpus.net

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• There are millions of white Americans today who still can barely bring themselves to acknowledge that the Civil War, with its twin Americas locked in a death match, was about slavery. They'll argue it was about economics, and they're right only because one of those economies was a slave economy. They'll argue it was about culture, and they're right only because one of those cultures was a slave culture.

  Steve Erickson

  War, White, Culture

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• The last thing I want is that sense of artifice - rather I want the reader drawn into the story and lost in it and vested in it. So the emotional connection is everything, albeit a connection on my terms.

  Steve Erickson

  Emotional, Connections, Stories

  Source: therumpus.net

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• While a particularly deft sense of irony may be one of the tools of great storytellers, I think it's also true that if irony serves as a retreat from an emotional engagement that you're overly concerned is uncool, that's a failure of nerve.

  Steve Erickson

  Emotional, Thinking, Nerves

  Source: therumpus.net

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• In essence I'm really a very traditional writer. I subscribe to the notion that, ultimately, characters do drive everything else.

  Steve Erickson

  Character, Essence, Notion

  Source: therumpus.net

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