Quotes by Darin Strauss - Page 2

One of the disconcerting things about writing for publication is that you're trying to clear your little parcel of land in a field where Taste is king - and, as we all know, there's no accounting for Taste.
Darin Strauss / Writer
Accounting
Parcel
Publication
Taste
Disconcerting
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In the worst memoirs, you can feel the author justifying himself - forgiving himself - in every paragraph. In the best memoirs, the author is tougher on him- or herself than his or her readers will ever be.
Darin Strauss / Writer
Forgiving
Paragraph
Author
Herself
Justifying
Memoirs
Readers
Tougher
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I got a job writing for a financial technology newsletter in Manhattan. I didn't even understand what I was writing about. The newsletter had, like, 2,000 subscribers, and it was $700 a year for a subscription.
Darin Strauss / Writer
Manhattan
Subscription
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I delivered Chinese food on Long island, which is pretty depressing. I lived with my parents and did that for six months. I got a job a few towns over from mine so I wouldn't have to see people from my high school.
Darin Strauss / Writer
Chinese
Chinese Food
Depressing
Long Island
Towns
Delivered
Island
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In order for a narrative to work, the primary character should have a concrete desire - a need that drives her story - and the story's writer should make this goal known to the reader pretty early in the narrative.
Darin Strauss / Writer
Concrete
Narrative
Drives
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In Minneapolis, I learned that there are more theaters per square mile than in any U.S. city but New York, and we also had great Midwestern beef in our salads in a plaza overlooking the national headquarters of Target, Inc.
Darin Strauss / Writer
Beef
Headquarters
Minneapolis
Overlooking
Target
Great City New
Per
Mile
Plaza
Salads
Square
Theaters
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I spent three and a half years writing the novel 'Chang & Eng,' about the conjoined brothers for whom the term 'Siamese twins' was contrived, and when I think of these afflicted people, my only emotion is one of profound sympathy.
Darin Strauss / Writer
Sympathy
Emotion
Profound
Term
Twins
Afflicted
Contrived
Half Years
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Constant rejection. No security. Career paths being dictated by freelance reviewers. And of course, the terror of the writing desk, of the blank page. Why is it so hard for our non-writer friends to understand this - that it's a job?
Darin Strauss / Writer
Blank
Constant
Rejection
Reviewers
Terror
Blank Page
Desk
Dictated
Freelance
Page
Paths
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Sin in the Second City is a masterful history lesson, a harrowing biography, and - best of all - a superfun read. The Everleigh story closely follows the turns of American history like a little sister. I can't recommend this book loudly enough.
Darin Strauss / Writer
Book
Cities
Little Sister
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By now, the camouflage had become my skin. My friends wouldn't want to know. Who would want to know? I certainly didn't want to know. All I wanted was to hold my assumptions to the light, and to watch them sparkle in their facets, as all sham gemstones do.
Darin Strauss / Writer
Light
Skins
Watches
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If you're guilty of something, you can focus on that, but if something terrible happens, and you can't imagine how you could have changed it, that's very difficult for the mind. In some ways, it's more difficult not to be at fault because it's a subtler thing.
Darin Strauss / Writer
Guilty
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What makes writing a memoir difficult is harder to quantify. Is it learning to know when you're ready to talk about something? Is it seeing the structure in a lumpen mass of fact? Is it finding out what you were really like as other people saw you? Yes to each.
Darin Strauss / Writer
Mass
Memoir
Structure
Quantify
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V. S. Pritchett was one of the most admired, fun, talked-about writers of the 20th century: he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth for his work with prose. He was born in 1900, wrote till he died in 1997, and has been tidily forgotten ever since. This is a real shame.
Darin Strauss / Writer
Died
Forgotten
Prose
Admired
Elizabeth
Writers
Queen
Till
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You get a bad review with a novel, and it hurts. But I imagine if you get a bad review with a memoir, it hurts more because you can always say, 'Well, they didn't like my characters,' but when you're the character, it's like, 'Oh, yeah, they actually didn't like me.'
Darin Strauss / Writer
Memoir
Always Character Me
Bad Review
Hurts
Oh Yeah
Review
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Surprisingly, Manhattan casts a sort of undersized shadow onto Long Island. Where I grew up, everyone seemed totally disconnected from the city - ours could have been any suburb, anywhere - though when traffic was thin, it took us only half an hour to get into midtown.
Darin Strauss / Writer
Casts
Disconnected
Long Island
Manhattan
Shadow
Traffic
Island
Onto
Ours
Suburb
Surprisingly
Thin
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Now, whether my not asking for good things to happen to me is subconsciously intended to win me brownie points with God is something I can't answer. But I do feel the need to give thanks and also not to feel hypocritical by asking for things when I have doubts that God would answer me.
Darin Strauss / Writer
Good Things
Hypocritical
Thanks
God Good Me
Doubts
Intended
Subconsciously
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I've come to see our central nervous system as a kind of vintage switchboard, all thick foam wires and old-fashioned plugs. The circuitry isn't properly equipped; after a surplus of emotional information the system overloads, the circuit breaks, the board runs dark. That's what shock is.
Darin Strauss / Writer
Running
Dark
Emotional
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Perhaps it's because a writer lives in Brooklyn that he'd want to get away from it. It can be very sustaining, this community of writers - sometimes it's the feeling of many hands giving you a boost. But all that identical ambition can be choking, too. The many hands slide up to your throat.
Darin Strauss / Writer
Ambition
Boost
Brooklyn
Identical
Sustaining
Throat
Choking
Slide
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After a life deprived of everything from romantic love to the choice of when to wake up in the morning, after 29 years without the ability to have a career or even to be alone at toilet, the Bijani sisters are not symbols but women who have had to live a shared life of constant, quotidian sacrifice.
Darin Strauss / Writer
Constant
Deprived
Romantic Love
Sacrifice
Wake Up
Life Alone Love
Sisters
Toilet
Shared
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A good writer knows that if her style and perceptions are really cooking, she can bring anything off. It's okay, of course, for novelists to depict bland, average families living bland, average lives in bland, average towns. But it isn't okay when those novelists don't outshine their bland, average subjects.
Darin Strauss / Writer
Average
Bland
Cooking
Novelists
Okay
Subjects
Towns
Depict
Good Writer
Perceptions
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Everybody wants life to speak to them with special kindness. Every personal story begs to be steered toward reverie, toward some relief from unpleasant truths: That you are a self, that beyond anything else you want the best for that self. That, if it is to be you or someone else, you need it to be you, no matter what.
Darin Strauss / Writer
Kindness
Self
Special
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For the fiction students I teach, one of the most common mistakes is to start in the wrong place. Often the actual story doesn't begin until about a third of the way into their narratives. They start off instead with excessive scene-setting, metaphysical speculation, introducing nonessential dramatis personae, throat-clearing, etc.
Darin Strauss / Writer
Etc
Introducing
Metaphysical
Speculation
Actual
Excessive
Narratives
Wrong Place
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Darin Strauss Quotes - Page 2

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