Latest Mark Leyner Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• I have an enduring, very robust infatuation with dictators. I have an infatuation with Stalin, Mao, and Mussolini. In the Paris Review interview I did (in 2013), I said my next book, this one, was going to be about Mussolini. I wound up only having a Mussolini cameo in the book.

  Mark Leyner

  Book, Infatuation, Dictator

  Source: therumpus.net

• When you are a child, you often stare too closely at the wrong thing. I remember the first time I was taken to Yankee Stadium. Someone had spilled something sweet earlier in the day and the ground was covered with ants. I spent the whole game staring at the ants, and that was more fascinating than the game.

  Mark Leyner

  Sweet, Children, Taken

  Source: therumpus.net

• I think as I have gotten older, my feelings about my role in the culture as a writer, and me specifically, has changed, and has become more degraded and marginalized. This may be a more personal and psychological than a sociological insight, but I feel more vulnerable.

  Mark Leyner

  Thinking, Feelings, Culture

  Source: therumpus.net

• In me, speaking psychologically, there is always an ongoing struggle between my enormously self-regarding, almost delusionally aspirational, Napoleonic personality and a marginalized one.

  Mark Leyner

  Struggle, Personality

  Source: therumpus.net

• People have no idea how much work it is for a man to produce an ejaculation. You have this seminal vesicle churning out this fluid, the prostate gland producing an alkaline solution. It's like having five iron chefs in your crotch working to cook up this stuff.

  Mark Leyner

  Men, People, Chef

  Source: abcnews.go.com

• Actually what's worse than a dog's mouth is a cat's mouth. They're not dirtier per se, but they have sharper teeth, so they are much more likely to go deep, should they bite you.

  Mark Leyner

  Source: abcnews.go.com

• My idea with my work is always to fashion something that's impossible to transpose into any other media.

  Mark Leyner

  Fashion, Media, Ideas

  "The Rumpus Book Club chat with Mark Leyner". Live chat (edited by Brian Spears), therumpus.net. March 16, 2016.

• I'm in that very preliminary stage of wondering how exactly to "pressurize" the novel in some way I've never considered before.

  Mark Leyner

  Way, Wonder, Stage

  "The Rumpus Book Club Chat With Mark Leyner". Interview with Brian Spears, therumpus.net. March 16, 2016.

• I think of memory as a game, that is as something one engages in with a very profound kind of "playfulness."

  Mark Leyner

  Memories, Thinking, Games

  "The Rumpus Book Club chat with Mark Leyner". Live chat (edited by Brian Spears), therumpus.net. March 16, 2016.

• I've always been entranced with theater.

  Mark Leyner

  Theater

  "The Rumpus Book Club chat with Mark Leyner". Live chat (edited by Brian Spears), therumpus.net. March 16, 2016.

• I'm fascinated with video games, though I can't really play them. It's definitely an art form that intrigues me to no end, though.

  Mark Leyner

  Art, Games, Play

  Source: therumpus.net

• I've always wanted to be a poet at the beginning. I would look at my grandparents' books and my parents' books. And in my family, a typical aspirational Jewish family, being a writer was very much exalted, and it seemed impossible to me, that I could ever do something like that.

  Mark Leyner

  Book, Grandparent, Typical

  "Whit Stillman and Mark Leyner on Their First Projects in 15 Years". Interview with Matthew Perpetua, www.rollingstone.com. April 6, 2012.

• One of the things that struck me as unique about Hollywood is that I never had bad meetings. There were all enthusiastic, but meaninglessly enthusiastic.

  Mark Leyner

  Unique, Hollywood, Enthusiastic

  "Whit Stillman and Mark Leyner on Their First Projects in 15 Years". Interview with Matthew Perpetua, www.rollingstone.com. April 6, 2012.

• I think I'm a shy, self-conscious person who thinks he's being looked at and tries to look okay. Not in a hottie, narcissistic way necessarily.

  Mark Leyner

  Thinking, Self, Trying

  "Whit Stillman and Mark Leyner on Their First Projects in 15 Years". Interview with Matthew Perpetua, www.rollingstone.com. April 6, 2012.

• I think people got in touch with me either knowing my work, or probably more frequently just knowing a plot or sort of buzz about something I did and sort of saying, "Get that guy that writes the crazy stuff in here."

  Mark Leyner

  Crazy, Writing, Thinking

  "Whit Stillman and Mark Leyner on Their First Projects in 15 Years". Interview with Matthew Perpetua, www.rollingstone.com. April 6, 2012.

• Stand-up comedy had an interesting effect on me in terms of how I started to think about constructing things, because I really loved the interstices, the linkages, or lack thereof.

  Mark Leyner

  Thinking, Interesting, Comedy

  Interview with Brian Joseph Davis, www.believermag.com.