I always joke that every novel is really about the same thing: one person's struggle against society. Joshua Mohr More Quotes by Joshua Mohr More Quotes From Joshua Mohr Hughes' debut novel, At Dawn, follows a former All-American wrestler, and is there any better metaphor for contemporary American life? We're all wrestling, tussling with the economy, no jobs, doing the best we can. Hughes doesn't flinch from the tough existential questions. He embraces them. Joshua Mohr dawnjobswrestling No matter what we've done, no matter the disappointments and sullied blunders, today is the opportunity to do right by ourselves. Joshua Mohr donedisappointmentopportunity Yes, things happened to me - brutal things - but I'm not going to give them so much clout by dwelling on them, empowering them to haunt my heart years after the events transpired. And no good comes from that. These ghosts don't need us to help them stay alive. If we're after real deal healing, these ghosts must desiccate. Joshua Mohr realhealingheart I don't think escaping is necessarily a problem, but we can get addicted to almost anything. If you're craving being in this other reality and you don't want to participate in your own reality, those are the times we have to start asking ourselves difficult questions. Joshua Mohr escapingrealitythinking Memoirs need confusion. It's the thing every human has in common. We are magnificently confused. Joshua Mohr confusedconfusionneeds My musical sensibilities were formed around punk rock, that quintessential dilution of an art that's both ugly and lovely at the same time. Joshua Mohr lovelyrocksart For the book to succeed, it has to have equal parts ugliness and beauty, counterpoints adding up to emotional complexity. To me, there's a dignity in letting your art be emotionally complex. Joshua Mohr emotionalbookart I like art that trusts its audience, that's written for readers who like to work hard. I like art that knows its readers are up to the challenge of interacting with difficult material. Joshua Mohr hard-workchallengesart I'll never be the sort of author who sells that many copies. You'll never see a book of mine being sold on a table at Costco, between the extra-large jorts and a barrel of salsa. And I wouldn't have it any other way. I'll be indie till I die. Joshua Mohr tablesbookway It's a beautiful aspect of narrative construction, hunting for the right images and metaphors to render our character's hearts/minds/souls as though they're ecosystems, full-fledged settings for a reader to inhabit like a place. Joshua Mohr heartbeautifulcharacter If Dante was writing The Divine Comedy in 2013, he might very well have set part of it in the suburbs. Joshua Mohr comedywritingmight I'm a semi-failed writer, but I'm a capital-F Failed musician. Joshua Mohr musician My father deprived me of any truths about himself. He died without ever letting me know who he truly was. I only knew his facades, basically. And it breaks my heart that he never trusted me enough to tell me the truth. Joshua Mohr never-trustheartfather I never wanted/expected to write a memoir, but this life thing, it has a way of sideswiping our worlds, scaring us so thoroughly that our past lenses of contextualizing events don't work - they cease to matter. Joshua Mohr our-worldwritingpast I just thought it was important that people knew right from the jump that I've got problems. But in all seriousness, that's a huge part of my writing process. Joshua Mohr importantwritingpeople I'm a very tactile learner, so I need analog index cards, moving them all about, trying out various sequences for the book's architecture. Joshua Mohr tryingbookmoving I always wished to be a better planner. It seems more elegant, while my trial and error process is more akin to someone scratching an awful case of poison oak. Joshua Mohr trial-and-errorerrorspoison It was important to buy into the fact that the nine hundred pages an end-reader never sees are just as valuable as the ones that are bound and placed on the shelf. Joshua Mohr pagesimportantnine I always feel that as the author, once I know what a character is ashamed of, then I can go about making her truthful on the page. Joshua Mohr truthfulpagescharacter The point of reading is to inhabit a consciousness that doesn't belong to the reader, immersing yourself in a life that's wholly realized. And a huge facet of our psychic and existential make-ups is the things we're not proud of, things we didn't ask to experience, the scenarios we flubbed. Joshua Mohr psychicsproudreading
