Latest Porochista Khakpour Quotes from Interviews

• Because for me to go fully experimental, it would turn into an artist book actually. And I'm not opposed to that. But I wanted to toy with the conventions of traditional narrative and sometimes to do that all the way, you have to actually utilize traditional narrative, I think - or it's one way to do it.

  Porochista Khakpour

  Book, Thinking, Artist

  Source: therumpus.net

• I love to read and teach experimental fiction but yes, neither this work nor my first novel is really that experimental. It uses some experimental techniques but in the end, I would not say that it is experimental. I'm not sure why. I do a lot of writing on my own, and I have always just written this way.

  Porochista Khakpour

  Writing, Firsts, Technique

  Source: therumpus.net

• There are so many reasons, but a big reason is that the literary world is simply too white. When there are more professors of color being employed by these institutions maybe there will be some change in the student populations.

  Porochista Khakpour

  Color, White, Population

  Source: therumpus.net

• I always read the Latin American writers. I love so many of them: Gabriel García Márquez, José Donoso, Alejo Carpentier, Jorge Luis Borges, Clarice Lispector. I also love a lot of American experimental writers and surrealist European writers. But perhaps The Persian Book of Kings was the greatest influence - I encourage people to look at it. There is such a wealth of incredible stories.

  Porochista Khakpour

  Kings, Latin, Book

  Source: therumpus.net

• I just see in pop culture, music, visual art, books, etc., a real hunger for the new and different, and I think that's amazing. Satisfying this hunger is part of the responsibility of a creative person.

  Porochista Khakpour

  Art, Real, Book

  Source: therumpus.net

• Being unique seems more desirable than ever. People are exhausted by clichés, by platitudes, by mass-produced realities, by what's been done and done and done. The role of a true artist is to present their own unique vision, and so it has always made sense to me that works of art should be radical.

  Porochista Khakpour

  Art, Reality, Unique

  Source: therumpus.net

• The radical is simply being given more room in the mainstream. And I think young people - I'm talking about the very young millennials - they are bored by so much so fast and have such fast big brains, that they won't digest lazy uninteresting work in the way my generation might have. This is a great opportunity for those on the fringe to be less on the fringe perhaps.

  Porochista Khakpour

  Thinking, Opportunity, Talking

  Source: therumpus.net

• There is less gray area there, less doubt. There is a security in being some thing all the way. Our culture, too, encourages this way of being - exaggeration, for example, is the key to advertising success in the United States. But hyperbole also seems a big part of Iranian culture, as well.

  Porochista Khakpour

  Keys, Doubt, Way

  Source: therumpus.net

• I guess none of the sides of my hyphen are particularly subtle cultures. But perhaps there is also a sense that these characters are all parentless - every character in this book is feral in some way - without any guidance in their upbringing. They find no choice but to seek refuge in extreme behaviors.

  Porochista Khakpour

  Book, Character, Choices

  Source: therumpus.net

• For me, every human is a little bit an exaggerated version of a real human - in most cases, they are versions of myself. I am someone deeply motivated by extremes - the poles not only become home for me, but they also become, strangely, my comfort zones.

  Porochista Khakpour

  Real, Home, Comfort

  Source: therumpus.net

• My characters' addictions are what makes them a bit stylized or "grotesque" - not just in appearance but through what drives them. Addiction is what threatens stability and normalcy and yet it seems very much a part of being human - at least we are all a bit obsessive and compulsive. Aren't all humans driven by mad desires for one thing or another?

  Porochista Khakpour

  Character, Addiction, Mad

  Source: therumpus.net

• Maybe in writing about and through trauma it was therapeutic in a way, but it didn't feel like it at the time. I was in a very dark place, in lots of foreign cities, far from New York. A lot of personal trials and tribulations took over my life in those years. It might be some time before I see what therapeutic function this book did serve. But for now, it's not even easy to read from it.

  Porochista Khakpour

  New York, Book, Writing

  Source: therumpus.net

• Addiction is a very compelling subject for literature - especially now that it's nearly impossible to come out of adult experience without some addiction - to substances, sure, but also to love, sex, success, failure, power.

  Porochista Khakpour

  Sex, Addiction, Adults

  Source: therumpus.net

• It [9/11 tragedy] has affected us on so many levels: economically, morally, spiritually, ethically. It's been all over the place. A new American identity emerged - we now live in a very different America. This is the power of the definitive event.

  Porochista Khakpour

  America, Tragedy, Identity

  Source: therumpus.net

• 9/11 was just an enormous event in so many senses of the word - I mean, we are still in the "post-9/11 era" and perhaps will be forever? Sometimes it seems like it. It was such a monstrous act of imagination over anything else - the actual fatalities, while awful, were not what distinguished the event from others.

  Porochista Khakpour

  Mean, Imagination, Forever

  Source: therumpus.net

• It [9/11 tragedy] was the spectacle, what al-Qaeda gets its main power from - why their terrorism truly earns the word "acts." They are very theatrical, always - the simultaneous violence, the grandiose, symbolic gestures (the number 911, "United" and "American" flights, the World Trade as target etc). And then its aftermath.

  Porochista Khakpour

  Numbers, Tragedy, Aftermath

  Source: therumpus.net

• The Illusionist is the storyteller in so many ways. Symbols become his obsession. It's not simply about creating plot - one must also grapple with theme. Nowadays we have a lot of characters and a lot of action but it's hard to sit still and really meditate on meaning, worldviews, concepts, ideologies even. I make my Illusionist do what I've had to do, often with copious amounts of stumbling and frustration. His real humanity comes from being an artist, I think - his creativity is what makes him a man.

  Porochista Khakpour

  Real, Creativity, Character

  Source: therumpus.net

• Be careful what you wish for, I guess. I believe - this will sound bloated, but I believe it - that true art, the potent stuff, can take the world down with it, just like religion can. And the opposite of course.

  Porochista Khakpour

  Art, Believe, Opposites

  Source: therumpus.net

• I write first drafts feverishly fast, and then I spend years editing. It's not that sentence-by-sentence perfectionist technique some writers I admire use. I need to see the thing, in some form, and then work with it over and over and over until it makes sense to me - until its concerns approach me, until its themes come to my attention. At that editing stage, the story picks itself and it's just up to me to see it, to find it. If I've done a good job, what it all means will force me to confront it in further edits.

  Porochista Khakpour

  Jobs, Writing, Mean

  Source: therumpus.net

• In South Pasadena, artists were around but invisible somehow. Even though it was just a fifteen-minute drive from Downtown LA, it felt worlds apart. That suburban American experience can both protect and stunt you. I couldn't wait to move to New York to become the person I've always wanted to become.

  Porochista Khakpour

  New York, Moving, Artist

  Source: therumpus.net

• My interest, perhaps, came out of the trauma of being a young immigrant in this country and constantly feeling my "resident alien" status. I remember trying to learn English on kindergarten playgrounds. I tried hard to be a convincing American but it was a losing battle. I was labeled weird and that tag never left me - all through high school, I was always the oddball. It was not always an easy path - I just had to tell myself that one day, being on the periphery would become an asset (and I think it finally has, as a creative adult).

  Porochista Khakpour

  Country, School, Thinking

  Source: therumpus.net

• I both loved and hated South Pasadena. On the one hand, it was so diverse - all my closest friends were immigrants or had immigrant parents. On the other hand, it was a bit conservative - in a sort of wholesome, Midwestern, small-town sense. I never met a single writer until I moved to New York City for college.

  Porochista Khakpour

  New York, College, Hands

  Source: therumpus.net

• I love outsider stories. And I also like a lot of genre fiction, too. So I wanted to write a literary book that flirted with thriller and fantasy and even science fiction. I wanted the coming-of-age story and the love story to be about "outsiderdom" - one of the themes I am most interested in.

  Porochista Khakpour

  Book, Writing, Age

  Source: therumpus.net

• The original Zal story by Ferdowsi gives a very moving account of an infant who had all odds against him - he was left to die in the wilderness and a giant, benevolent bird rescued him and became his guardian angel. This tale thrilled me; I've always wanted to write about it.

  Porochista Khakpour

  Moving, Writing, Angel

  Source: therumpus.net

• I wanted to literalize the surreal here. Those are my favorite kinds of stories. I love when Gabriel García Márquez does that, for instance - it adds to the joy, dares you to believe the unbelievable. And why not: so much of life is so dreamlike, so strange, so absurd.

  Porochista Khakpour

  Believe, Joy, Doe

  Source: therumpus.net

You May Also Like:

Emily Gould

Alexander Chee

Rivka Galchen

Dalia Sofer

Said Sayrafiezadeh

Bret Anthony Johnston

Simon Van Booy