Michael Helm Quotes

• Paranoia can be a sign of a sanity in some circumstances, in some places and times.

  Michael Helm

  Sanity, Paranoia, Circumstances

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• Absurdity isn't quite so absurd as it once was.

  Michael Helm

  Absurd, Absurdity

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• We can't write a serious novel in the 21st century without acknowledging the inescapable self-awareness we're stuck with. The idea we're surrounded by falsehoods and lies. It's hard for the thinking person to believe in narratives. And yet we want some place to invest our belief.

  Michael Helm

  Lying, Believe, Writing

  Source: therumpus.net

  7 Copy quote

• I just write what I want to read, and sometimes keeping it interesting means adding one more element that ends up adding another year to the work.

  Michael Helm

  Writing, Mean, Years

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• I love poetry, read it a lot, but make no claim to being able to write it.

  Michael Helm

  Writing, Able, Love Poetry

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• The idea that language can be recombined to create new forms, new things, is of course very old in poetry.

  Michael Helm

  Ideas, Language, Form

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• We're getting used to reality and fantasy passing into each other. Much of the border between them has been erased.

  Michael Helm

  Reality, Borders, Fantasy

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• It's fiction's job to express how it feels to be living now, and it's a complex feeling, full of contradiction. To me it often feels like a brutal trivialization of reality.

  Michael Helm

  Jobs, Reality, Feelings

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• I seem always to have two or three novels going at once. It takes me a long time to finish one.

  Michael Helm

  Two, Long, Three

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• We want to know that we're not alone with our loneliness or loss.

  Michael Helm

  Loneliness, Loss, Want

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• Science is claiming ever more ground from popular stories of the kind we thought we weren't to believe in.

  Michael Helm

  Believe, Stories, Kind

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• Trauma, and certain important experiences, can imprint on us at a genetic level.

  Michael Helm

  Important, Levels, Certain

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• Many of the concepts we once thought belonged to speculation or science fiction are now part of our understood reality.

  Michael Helm

  Reality, Fiction, Speculation

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• The real past can traumatize us, but so can the real future.

  Michael Helm

  Real, Past

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• There's some evidence that before events of mass trauma, even unpredictable ones, people begin to feel higher anxiety, often expressed in terms specific to the event.

  Michael Helm

  People, Anxiety, Events

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• Novels seem to exist because of this need to know and connect, and so story becomes charged with necessity.

  Michael Helm

  Needs, Stories, Novel

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• The novel's not the best form for disposing ideas, though that's one thing it can do. It likely is the best form, though, for conveying the experience of us each being alone, trapped in our skulls with only these bodies and this imperfect instrument of language to convey our state and to find meaning and connection.

  Michael Helm

  Ideas, Skulls, Connections

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• I like a great degree of compression. I like to mix lateral steps with forward ones. I don't want the prose ever to feel simply functional - at least not for any stretch.

  Michael Helm

  Want, Steps, Degrees

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• I'm not even sure if empathy is an act, it could be a disposition.

  Michael Helm

  Empathy, Disposition, Ifs

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• Toronto is hard to capture in a few strokes.

  Michael Helm

  Toronto, Capture, Strokes

  Source: therumpus.net

  8 Copy quote

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