I am always trying to do something new and different. The first step is curiosity, questions. You pay attention to what fascinates you. If you can't shake it, there is something there. Dana Spiotta More Quotes by Dana Spiotta More Quotes From Dana Spiotta We exist because of suburbia. Suburbia is a freak’s dreamworld, a world of extra rooms upstairs and long, lazy afternoons with no interference. A place where you can listen to your LPs for hours on end. You can live in your room, your own rent-free corner of the universe, and create a world of pleasure and interest entirely centered on yourself and your interior aesthetic and logic. Dana Spiotta afternoon lazy long 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 issues choices inspirational Occupy Wall Street means making Wall Street and the corporate power elite understand that the people affected by the binge of unregulated greed are not going away, and they are not going to give up. Dana Spiotta wall giving-up mean Memory is not particularly linear - it is associative, repetitive, subjective and porous. But the writer needs to convey disorder and dysfunction without making the novel itself disorderly or dysfunctional. Dana Spiotta dysfunction memories needs I am a great procrastinator. When the writing is going really well, the laundry piles up. Dana Spiotta laundry wells writing Getting an audience requires luck as well as talent. Some artists are private and shy. It costs them too much. Dana Spiotta shy luck artist That was one of the reasons I became a writer - I never really had that many friends. I would read a lot, and listen to music. And that was my life. Dana Spiotta many-friends listening-to-music reason If you directly try to write about an idea, it will never be what you imagined. But if you're imagining through the building of sentences, through the characters, and paying attention to avoid ease and comfort yet still thinking about making the sentences work, you will get a shot at some real interesting stuff. Dana Spiotta real writing character Yes, I did try acting when I was in high school and I was terrible at it. So I definitely have had the experience of being bad at artistic endeavor. Dana Spiotta acting trying school A good novel should be deeply unsettling - its satisfactions should come from its authenticity and its formal coherence. We must feel something crucial is at stake. Dana Spiotta coherence authenticity satisfaction There's lots of things that can't make it in the world that are worth making. There are lots of great artists who never make it, there are lots of great writers who don't get published - is it still worthwhile? Aren't we glad people are still doing it? Dana Spiotta artist people world Each character requires different language, and these issues become inseparable. You have all these balls in the air: language, character, narrative. For me, the primary focus must be words, sentences, paragraphs. Dana Spiotta issues air character 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 writing moving thinking 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 simplicity ease people 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 culture way thinking 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 impact technology past 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 chance want meaningful Even a documentary portrait of a person that tries to be very accurate is shaped by the filmmaker in so many ways. Dana Spiotta portraits trying way Even if we try to see people in our lives accurately, it is distorted by our own wants and prejudices and experiences. Dana Spiotta prejudice trying people I always think the novelist should go to the culture's dark places and poke around. Pose a lot of hard questions. Dana Spiotta novelists dark thinking
