The idea that you can live off the grid and just do your own thing is a very American idea - that you should be able to do your own thing, if you want to, if you're willing to pay the price for it. I think the price has gotten higher and higher. Dana Spiotta More Quotes by Dana Spiotta More Quotes From Dana Spiotta Your memories from your early childhood seem to have such purchase on your emotions. They are so concrete. Dana Spiotta childhood emotion memories I like the challenge of creating a world with only sentences. Dana Spiotta creating challenges world It takes a long time to write a novel when you have to keep interrupting your work to earn money. Dana Spiotta novel writing long I am, it seems, interested in people with multiple identities. I think we all have multiple identities. Dana Spiotta identity people thinking I try to write about how we live today, how we use language, technology, our bodies. Dana Spiotta technology writing trying All roads lead to Wall Street, but we feel the effects of Wall Street on every street corner. Certainly in Syracuse, N.Y., where I live. Dana Spiotta streets wall feels I like to buy books for the kids in my family. I guess that's why they call me the 'mean' aunt. Dana Spiotta mean kids book 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 always-trying curiosity firsts Although a great restaurant experience must include great food, a bad restaurant experience can be achieved through bad service alone. Ideally, service is invisible. You notice it only when something goes wrong. Dana Spiotta great-food great-restaurants invisible I don't have a lot of skills, but one thing I can do is, I can compartmentalize. I can make that a little world that I can go back to, so I can be a waitress, or I can be a teacher, and then go and work on my book. Dana Spiotta skills teacher book I have to say that movies have as much impact on me as music. And that I learned as much about narrative from movies as I did from reading novels, how to arrange stories, how to juxtapose things. Dana Spiotta impact reading stories I do want to write about social/cultural/historical context. I'm interested in relationships, in character, but within a specific social context. Which is kind of a political thing, I admit that. But it's what I'm interested in, and it's how I believe human behavior is legible. Dana Spiotta writing character believe The novel is about, for me, sustained and organized looking. I do think that people have a hunger for a sustained engagement, that concentration that the book can offer. Dana Spiotta book people thinking I locate a great deal of the power of Occupy Wall Street in the name itself, 'Occupy Wall Street,' or '#OccupyWallStreet.' It works because the name contains everything you need to know: the tactic and the target. The name is also modular. You can create your own offshoot in your own city. Dana Spiotta wall cities names I think it's harder than ever to be an artist. I think that you end up, especially as a middle-aged person, you pay such big consequences for saying, 'I'm just going to devote my life to making art,' or 'I'm going to devote my life to writing novels.' You end up with no resources. Dana Spiotta writing art thinking I think there's a false division people sometimes make in describing literary novels, where there are people who write systems novels, or novels of ideas, and there are people who write about emotional things in which the movement is character driven. But no good novels are divisible in that way. Dana Spiotta emotional writing character My husband is a musician. He cooks and he's a chef but he also, he makes basement recordings. So many people in my life make basement recordings, so I feel very lucky, I'm surrounded by very creative people. Dana Spiotta husband creative people People think it's suspect and self-indulgent to make art, and I don't think that's true. Some people think you should be busy making something that you can sell in the marketplace, and if nobody wants to buy it, it must be crap. And that's not true. Dana Spiotta self art thinking You're trying to make the language work, and your subconscious is being allowed to make the deeper, more profound connections. It's much better than going at it all frontally. But you can't conjure it in an intellectual way; it has to come out of another engagement, a more intuitive engagement. Revision is where the intellectual, analytical work happens. At least for me. Dana Spiotta intellectual trying profound In order to be a living, breathing thing, a novel has to be failed in some kind of way. Or at least that's how I keep writing them. Dana Spiotta breathing writing order
