Time is a slippery thing: lose hold of it once, and its string might sail out of your hands forever. Anthony Doerr More Quotes by Anthony Doerr More Quotes From Anthony Doerr I guess whatever maturity is there may be there because I've been keeping a journal forever. In high school my friends would make fun of me - you're doing your man diary again. So I was always trying to translate experience into words. Anthony Doerr maturity fun school Don’t you want to be alive before you die? Anthony Doerr dies alive want I feel like it has gone very fast for me, but I feel like it wasn't instantaneous, at all. I was getting a lot of rejections. I just got very lucky and it happened quickly for me. I don't feel like I'm a prodigy or something. Anthony Doerr rejection lucky gone Things hardly ever work on the first try. We'll make another, a better one. Anthony Doerr trying firsts I guess you could say I've been writing all my life. Anthony Doerr writing A real diamond is never perfect. Anthony Doerr diamond real perfect My sister-in-law is a painter, and I'll say, how long did it take you to paint that painting. She'll say, It took me maybe three days, but it took me all my life to get the skills to paint that painting. Anthony Doerr sister-in-law skills long I've been getting into Nick Drake lately, the folk singer. Sad, gorgeous stuff. Anthony Doerr gorgeous singers stuff I always told my dad I'd play professional football. Anthony Doerr dad play football You don't say, I'm going to be a writer when I grow up - at least I didn't. Anthony Doerr growing-up grows Travel definitely affects me as a writer. Anthony Doerr I never played inside as a kid - even in the rain I'd go out. Anthony Doerr rain kids It wasn't until I was 26 or 25 when I started sending work out to magazines. Anthony Doerr magazines work-out I write reviews of science books for the Boston Globe, so I like to give science books. Anthony Doerr boston writing book Invisible Beasts is a strange and beautiful meditation on love and seeing, a hybrid of fantasy and field guide, novel and essay, treatise and fable. With one hand it offers a sad commentary on environmental degradation, while with the other it presents a bright, whimsical, and funny exploration of what it means to be human. It's wonderfully written, crazily imagined, and absolutely original. Anthony Doerr beautiful mean hands Only Numbers. Pure math. You have to accustom yourself to thinking that way. Anthony Doerr math science thinking In our memories the stories of our lives defy chronology, resist transcription: past ambushes present, and future hurries into history. Anthony Doerr stories memories past WWII is something contemporary readers already know a lot about. If our schools are doing their jobs, they know about the invasion of Normandy, the Hitler Youth, the Holocaust, and at least a few of the horrors of the Eastern Front. Anthony Doerr holocaust jobs school I do fish. I think there is a connection between thinking and fishing mostly because you spend a lot of time up to your waist in water without a whole lot to keep your mind busy. Anthony Doerr sea lakes thinking The preciousness of life and the changes of weather and the beauty of seasons - all those things have always sort of dazzled me. Anthony Doerr me weather beauty life