Dana Spiotta Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• I think it's harder than ever to be an artist. I think that you end up, especially as a middle-aged person, you pay such big consequences for saying, 'I'm just going to devote my life to making art,' or 'I'm going to devote my life to writing novels.' You end up with no resources.

  Dana Spiotta

  Art, Writing, Thinking

  "Dana Spiotta on living the creative life". Interview with Jacket Copy, latimesblogs.latimes.com. August 3, 2011.

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• I locate a great deal of the power of Occupy Wall Street in the name itself, 'Occupy Wall Street,' or '#OccupyWallStreet.' It works because the name contains everything you need to know: the tactic and the target. The name is also modular. You can create your own offshoot in your own city.

  Dana Spiotta

  Wall, Cities, Names

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• The issue isn't, Am I good enough? No. The issue is, Do I not have any other choice? Will and desire don't matter. Ability doesn't matter. Need is the only thing that matters.

  Dana Spiotta

  Inspirational, Issues, Choices

  Dana Spiotta (2012). “Stone Arabia”, p.10, Canongate Books

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• My teaching exists in a different part of my brain. However, I am lucky enough to teach very smart graduate students.

  Dana Spiotta

  Smart, Teaching, Brain

  "Dana Spiotta’s Age of Innocence". Interview with Jeff Vasishta, www.interviewmagazine.com. March 11, 2016.

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• Although a great restaurant experience must include great food, a bad restaurant experience can be achieved through bad service alone. Ideally, service is invisible. You notice it only when something goes wrong.

  Dana Spiotta

  Great Restaurants, Invisible, Great Food

  "Control" by Dana Spiotta, www.newyorker.com. November 21, 2011.

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• In order to be a living, breathing thing, a novel has to be failed in some kind of way. Or at least that's how I keep writing them.

  Dana Spiotta

  Writing, Order, Breathing

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• I don't have a lot of skills, but one thing I can do is, I can compartmentalize. I can make that a little world that I can go back to, so I can be a waitress, or I can be a teacher, and then go and work on my book.

  Dana Spiotta

  Teacher, Book, Skills

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• I think most writers have to have a practice of writing. For me it is very early in the morning. I try to make it a separate world from the rest of my life.

  Dana Spiotta

  Morning, Writing, Thinking

  "Dana Spiotta’s Age of Innocence". Interview with Jeff Vasishta, www.interviewmagazine.com. March 11, 2016.

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• I find poignancy in the moments when a person realizes that she has made mistakes. I am not as interested in the mistakes themselves as I am with the consequences and how the person responds to her realization.

  Dana Spiotta

  Mistake, Realization, Realizing

  "Dana Spiotta’s Age of Innocence". Interview with Jeff Vasishta, www.interviewmagazine.com. March 11, 2016.

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• I am, it seems, interested in people with multiple identities. I think we all have multiple identities.

  Dana Spiotta

  Thinking, People, Identity

  "Dana Spiotta’s Age of Innocence". Interview with Jeff Vasishta, www.interviewmagazine.com. March 11, 2016.

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• I take the outline from a real person as inspiration, but the in-line is totally made up. Which is why I usually invent imaginary names.

  Dana Spiotta

  Real, Inspiration, Names

  "Dana Spiotta’s Age of Innocence". Interview with Jeff Vasishta, www.interviewmagazine.com. March 11, 2016.

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• I am one Dana when I am talking to my daughter, another when I am talking to the IRS, and another still when I do an interview. These characters are just extreme versions of ordinary human self-switching.

  Dana Spiotta

  Daughter, Character, Self

  "Dana Spiotta’s Age of Innocence". Interview with Jeff Vasishta, www.interviewmagazine.com. March 11, 2016.

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• You are always working towards the moments in which characters experience reckonings or insight or change. I like to track them past those moments.

  Dana Spiotta

  Character, Past, Track

  "Dana Spiotta’s Age of Innocence". Interview with Jeff Vasishta, www.interviewmagazine.com. March 11, 2016.

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• The writer has to be brave, I think.

  Dana Spiotta

  Thinking, Brave, Be Brave

  "Dana Spiotta’s Age of Innocence". Interview with Jeff Vasishta, www.interviewmagazine.com. March 11, 2016.

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• I do want to write about social/cultural/historical context. I'm interested in relationships, in character, but within a specific social context. Which is kind of a political thing, I admit that. But it's what I'm interested in, and it's how I believe human behavior is legible.

  Dana Spiotta

  Believe, Writing, Character

  Source: www.believermag.com

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• Tell me it's forbidden, unthinkable, and that's where I want to go. Because the chances are it's complicated, and the complications are meaningful.

  Dana Spiotta

  Meaningful, Want, Chance

  Source: www.believermag.com

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• I don't feel sentimental about the past, but I can't help noticing how hard it has become to keep a grip on anything. Maybe it's the totalizing impact of corporate culture, maybe it's the atomizing impact of technology.

  Dana Spiotta

  Past, Technology, Impact

  Source: www.believermag.com

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• I think there's a lot to be learned from pop culture. But at the same time I see the dangers of using it in an exclusive way to construct meaning in your life.

  Dana Spiotta

  Thinking, Way, Culture

  Source: www.believermag.com

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• Most human things are full of conflict and ambivalence, not ease and simplicity. The world has grown increasingly fundamentalist, and the parameters of discussion have become narrowed. People, when they're fearful, are vulnerable to certainty in rhetoric.

  Dana Spiotta

  People, Simplicity, Ease

  Source: www.believermag.com

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• For me writing is an organic process that starts with engaging the language and then thinking about the structure of the novel as you move along. Especially in revision you start to notice correlations. Things come up, not self-consciously, because you're busy feeling your way through sentences and trying to push the language into new places.

  Dana Spiotta

  Moving, Writing, Thinking

  Source: www.believermag.com

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• You're trying to make the language work, and your subconscious is being allowed to make the deeper, more profound connections. It's much better than going at it all frontally. But you can't conjure it in an intellectual way; it has to come out of another engagement, a more intuitive engagement. Revision is where the intellectual, analytical work happens. At least for me.

  Dana Spiotta

  Profound, Intellectual, Trying

  Source: www.believermag.com

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• I think there's a false division people sometimes make in describing literary novels, where there are people who write systems novels, or novels of ideas, and there are people who write about emotional things in which the movement is character driven. But no good novels are divisible in that way.

  Dana Spiotta

  Writing, Character, Emotional

  Source: www.believermag.com

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• There are lots of authentic, moving characters in so-called systems novels, just as there are certainly deep structural ideas in some character-driven novels.

  Dana Spiotta

  Moving, Character, Ideas

  Source: www.believermag.com

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• Even if we try to see people in our lives accurately, it is distorted by our own wants and prejudices and experiences.

  Dana Spiotta

  People, Trying, Prejudice

  "Dana Spiotta’s Age of Innocence". Interview with Jeff Vasishta, www.interviewmagazine.com. March 11, 2016.

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• Even a documentary portrait of a person that tries to be very accurate is shaped by the filmmaker in so many ways.

  Dana Spiotta

  Trying, Portraits, Way

  "Dana Spiotta’s Age of Innocence". Interview with Jeff Vasishta, www.interviewmagazine.com. March 11, 2016.

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