Amity Gaige Professions : Novelist Born : 1972 Browse All Authors Top 29 quotes by Amity Gaige I certainly want people to like my writing, but I know that if I write with the intention of trying to please people, the writing will not be good because it will not be authentic. So, ironically, I have to be willing to write something strange or unlovable in order to write anything truly good. Amity Gaige good know writing people For several years before I began 'The Folded World,' I worked at an urban college campus and had a job in a tutoring center, and people would come into the tutoring center, and for some reason, they just kept telling me their life stories. Amity Gaige me life people world I often read poetry to 'warm up' before I write. Amity Gaige write up warm poetry Nobody writes like Nabokov; nobody ever will. What I would give to write one sentence like Vladimir! Amity Gaige give nobody will like I think I have a very American desire and willingness to divulge everything. I would divulge more if I didn't know it wasn't smart. Amity Gaige think know smart desire I think novels are profoundly autobiographical. If writers deny that, they are lying. Or if it's really true, then I think it's a mistake. Amity Gaige i-think true think mistake I was born on an even keel. Family lore says I never cried, even at birth. I felt at ease on earth, in the right place. And like many children, I took comfort in life's regularity: Every few days it rained, the school bus came and went, and my parents were rooted in their union. Amity Gaige parents family life children Self-esteem comes quietly, like the truth. Amity Gaige quietly self-esteem like truth Several paranoid suspicions occurred to me, the worst of which was that my whole identity was merely a patched-together set of behaviors designed to keep my parents joined to each other - the repertoire of tricks of a small but intelligent dog. Amity Gaige parents me identity dog Similar Authors Adam Johnson novelist Ivan Goncharov novelist Binnie Kirshenbaum novelist Bruce Jay Friedman novelist Buchi Emecheta novelist Bryce Courtenay novelist All Authors