Reading 'Blood Will Out,' one begins to understand how so many people were duped by Clark Rockefeller. All the imposter needs is some kind of initial agreement that he is who he says he is; thereafter, consensus builds via a network of human relationships.

Amity Gaige

Categorized in : Understand Will People Reading

Childhood is supposed to be happy, and if you can't remember yours with any happiness, what hope have you later, when life starts handing you fresh grief?

Amity Gaige

childhood grief remember

To be a writer, open your heart. Keep it open. You can't be a writer with a closed heart.

Amity Gaige

open-your-heart heart

Be happy. Decide to be happy. If you want to be happy, be happy! No one cares if you're happy or not, so why wait for permission? And did it really matter if you had been deeply unhappy in your past? Who but you remembered that?

Amity Gaige

unhappy waiting past

To me, self-esteem is not self-love. It is self-acknowledgment, as in recognizing and accepting who you are.

Amity Gaige

self-love self-esteem me you

Don't let anyone tell you there's only one way to write.

Amity Gaige

only tell you way

It goes without saying that before its culture and literature can continue to evolve, Latvia first must endure the political comedy of creating a stable, functioning and unthreatened democracy.

Amity Gaige

comedy democracy political culture

I do think, in general, children are so perceptive, and they watch and they get so much, and that's wonderful. And it's also difficult for them because they see so much, but they don't understand.

Amity Gaige

understand see think children

I love writing letters. In order to write a novel in first person, I think I needed an addressee.

Amity Gaige

person think writing love

I researched children's rights, divorce law, and parental kidnapping. Millions of children and parents are touched by the inadequacy of the legal system to deal with the human heart.

Amity Gaige

parents law heart children

Oh, I'm a pretty bad poet. This has been corroborated by others.

Amity Gaige

others pretty bad poet

I wanted - and still want - to tell my mother's story. She fled Stalin's army in 1944, leaving Latvia, which was to be occupied by the Soviets for the next 50 years, and arrived to the U.S. when she was 11.

Amity Gaige

story army mother want

I think marriage and family keeps being written about because that's where we keep our reputations with ourselves - I mean, we can't quite slip the truths we reveal about ourselves at home.

Amity Gaige

think marriage family home

'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' is, to my mind, a work of perfect genius.

Amity Gaige

genius perfect mind work

Reading while I'm writing ideally inspires my competitive side. When I read great writers, I want to be a better writer.

Amity Gaige

better great reading writing

In the best writers, the outward-reaching interest in the 'found subject' leads back at a hairpin to some uncomfortable inner recognition that the writer has journeyed very far to see; he comes home half-dead.

Amity Gaige

best back see home

I think a writer is a describer. She describes society and human nature as she sees it. She has to be both typical of that society and alone within it.

Amity Gaige

alone think society nature

I loved Madeleine L'Engle as a child - 'A Wrinkle in Time.'

Amity Gaige

wrinkle loved child time

My personal writing philosophy is to try and write better every day.

Amity Gaige

every-day better day writing

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