Lynne Tillman Quotes - Page 3

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• If you're a "good" teacher, somebody who is responsible or careful, teaching takes time. Teaching is performative. Students nowadays evaluate you and there's a lot made in these evaluations about how you perform. Maybe you don't have the greatest delivery in the world. But you know a lot, have a lot to offer. So that's pretty unsettling. We've become so image-based and performance-based as a society. You have to be ready to appear on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" at any moment.

  Lynne Tillman

  Teacher, Teaching, World

  Interview with James Yeh, believermag.com. January 1, 2018.

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• Wanting to know all kinds of things is perfect for novelists, because novelists are generalists. We're not specialists in anything, except, hopefully, writing.

  Lynne Tillman

  Writing, Perfect, Kind

  Interview with James Yeh, believermag.com. January 1, 2018.

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• I do think we think repetitively. It's so hard to get certain thoughts out of your head. If you're angry at a friend, you're going to keep going back to that conversation.

  Lynne Tillman

  Thinking, Conversation, Certain

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• The idea of equality is misunderstood. I wouldn't ever argue that everyone is the same, but that differences should not be hierarchical. Attitudes and expectations have been imposed on both men and women. For instance, men had very little to do with the raising of their children before the women's movement. The women's movement has freed men to become more active as fathers. We're living in a period of transition, but change can be much slower than we want, with unintended consequences, and can also be happening without our seeing it.

  Lynne Tillman

  Children, Attitude, Father

  The Believer interview, artwriting.sva.edu. December 23, 2017.

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• Now that I'm an older woman, I'm so much more aware of the changes - almost too aware. I feel sorry for being so dismissive. You have to think about what you're thinking about and realize that you're thinking it.

  Lynne Tillman

  Sorry, Thinking, Realizing

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I think the slowness of exchange is over, and the idea of waiting for a response - that's gone. People don't want to wait. It's all this instantaneity. That's fine. But it also makes writing different, if you're writing for an instant exchange compared with being able to have time for more reflection.

  Lynne Tillman

  Writing, Reflection, Thinking

  Interview with James Yeh, believermag.com. January 1, 2018.

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• For me, the experience of not living in America was recognizing that I was American. You don't think about yourself being so culturally encoded, so nationally stamped; you don't discover that when you're a tourist for a month. You see how you reflect the place you're from. When I came back from living in Europe, I was very struck by how I didn't see America as the center of the world in the same way. It's very easy to slip back because America is so powerful. But any place you live is the center of the world.

  Lynne Tillman

  Powerful, Thinking, World

  Interview with James Yeh, believermag.com. January 1, 2018.

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• I still do believe that form and content are very much related. I think throwing away some of the rule books on that is a good thing.

  Lynne Tillman

  Believe, Book, Thinking

  Interview with James Yeh, believermag.com. January 1, 2018.

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• Reading gave me great comfort and pleasure. When I started being able to write, around seven or eight, I wanted to be able to do that myself, to create that other world.

  Lynne Tillman

  Reading, Writing, Eight

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• You can think everything is dire, but you act as if there's possibility. I see children coming into the world as an expression of this. Sometimes, not always - it can just be somebody that wasn't on the birth control pill or didn't have access to abortion. But I usually see a wanted child as a sign of optimism, and I like that.

  Lynne Tillman

  Children, Thinking, Optimism

  Interview with James Yeh, believermag.com. January 1, 2018.

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• Whether they're ghosts of great writers or people I loved - some died because of AIDS, others under mysterious circumstances - I don't want to forget these people, ever. That's very much a part of my still being alive - to remember those who aren't here anymore.

  Lynne Tillman

  People, Mysterious, Ghost

  Interview with James Yeh, believermag.com. January 1, 2018.

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• Writing and rewriting are the same thing to me. I don't believe what Allen Ginsberg said that "first thought, then - " I just don't believe that.

  Lynne Tillman

  Believe, Writing, Firsts

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• There's not usually one reason why we do anything and, in fact, often we don't know why we've done what we've done, especially what we have said or why, for instance, in conversation, which can be very tricky. Finally, we say something and think, "Why did we say that?" In retrospect we might know.

  Lynne Tillman

  Thinking, Done, Reason

  Interview with James Yeh, believermag.com. January 1, 2018.

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• I think about material that could work in the novel or story as I'm writing. I see if I can get there through what's happening with the character. But it's by inclination. It's not "At this moment this will happen." Usually with my characters you can't tell what has induced them to do anything. That's because, from my understanding of reality - which is always subjective - everything is overdetermined.

  Lynne Tillman

  Writing, Character, Reality

  Interview with James Yeh, believermag.com. January 1, 2018.

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• I think that sense of surprise, that you don't know where something is going, or what's going to happen, even as you write, that you're making it up as you go along - that's important to me. It's not a question of shock or surprise in a gimmicky way. It's that as you read, you become more deeply into something and into what happens, and become more involved and engaged, you're learning something or you're appreciating something or seeing something differently - that's what's surprising.

  Lynne Tillman

  Writing, Thinking, Appreciate

  Interview with James Yeh, believermag.com. January 1, 2018.

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• I think some people are not interesting to themselves. They're the sad, resigned folk. When people call themselves ordinary - "I'm just an ordinary person" - you do wonder what they mean, because people who call themselves ordinary occasionally turn out to be serial killers. Beware of those who say they're ordinary.

  Lynne Tillman

  Mean, Thinking, People

  Interview with James Yeh, believermag.com. January 1, 2018.

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• In a practical sense, pain kept me from sitting down as much, so that sometimes I would have to stand to write. Not that I would necessarily have gotten anywhere anyway. But it definitely set me back to be in so much pain.

  Lynne Tillman

  Pain, Writing, Sitting Down

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• There are lots of unlikable characters in literature. It doesn't mean they're not fascinating.

  Lynne Tillman

  Character, Mean, Literature

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• If I have to work on something for too long, then it must be wrong. At a certain point, if I've worked on a sentence for about an hour, then I realize that it's probably not the right sentence and means I'm trying to make something fit that's ungainly.

  Lynne Tillman

  Mean, Long, Trying

  Interview with James Yeh, believermag.com. January 1, 2018.

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• When you free women so they can choose to have or not to have, or to conceive - that's something that, for millennia, women couldn't do. Biology was, in many ways, destiny. We wouldn't be talking about gender if women could not control their pregnancies.

  Lynne Tillman

  Pregnancy, Destiny, Biology

  Interview with James Yeh, believermag.com. January 1, 2018.

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• As a reader myself, which precedes my being a writer, of course, I read in order to enter another world.

  Lynne Tillman

  Order, World, Reader

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I'm interested in reality but I'm not interested in realism at all.

  Lynne Tillman

  Reality, Realism, Not Interested

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I think I'm too indoctrinated. I'm going to use everything I can, and I think if I used an advertisement in that one, it would be yet another way to connect the current day with Wharton. Wharton has been perceived sometimes as being too upper class; Wharton was an extraordinary social thinker. As relevant today as anyone, so she uses some language that isn't current, but to me, I'm so happy about that because I get so bored with the 100 words that people mostly use.

  Lynne Tillman

  Thinking, People, Bored

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• The literary world is more time-traveling than the art world, and novelty is much more important in art than it is in writing.

  Lynne Tillman

  Art, Writing, Important

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I don't know what a natural thought process is.

  Lynne Tillman

  Natural

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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