Quotes by Harry Mathews - Page 1

I left Princeton, but I graduated Harvard, in 1952.
Harry Mathews / Author
Harvard
Left
Princeton
Graduated
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I think situations are more important than plot and character.
Harry Mathews / Author
Character
Important
Plot
Thinking
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You make something. You give up expressing and start inventing.
Harry Mathews / Author
Giving
Giving Up
Inventing
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My Life in CIA is the first time that I've ever written a story in my own name.
Harry Mathews / Author
Cia
First Time
Life Time My Life
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Music had been my first love among the arts, and I was fascinated by it, as I still am.
Harry Mathews / Author
Art
Fascinated
First Love
Firsts
Among
Arts
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And I finished college because I thought how much it would upset my parents if I didnt.
Harry Mathews / Author
College
Parent
Upset
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My mother could never understand why I didn't write a thriller, which I've finally done.
Harry Mathews / Author
Finally
Thriller
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And I finished college because I thought how much it would upset my parents if I didn't.
Harry Mathews / Author
Upset
How Much
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And then, when I left Princeton in the middle of my sophomore year, I went into the navy.
Harry Mathews / Author
Navy
Princeton
Sophomore
Sophomore Year
Years
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I'd been brought up on the Upper East Side in a WASP society, which was death on crutches.
Harry Mathews / Author
Easter
Crutches
East
East Side
Sides
Upper East Side
Upper
Wasp
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There are many things I’ve written that I didn’t really understand until a long time later.
Harry Mathews / Author
Long
Long Time
Written
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My next project is to get back to that. Actually, to learn how to write poetry. I'm not kidding.
Harry Mathews / Author
Project
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When Niki and I moved to Paris, there was also the challenge of Paris, an extremely daunting city.
Harry Mathews / Author
Moved
Challenge
Daunting
Extremely
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I graduated in 1952 and went to Europe, with Niki and our first child Laura, who was then a year old.
Harry Mathews / Author
Children
Europe
Laura
Years
First Child
Graduated
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What I said about John was that he liberated me from my anxieties about writing in a correct, acceptable way.
Harry Mathews / Author
Acceptable
Anxiety
Liberated
Way
Writing
Anxieties
Correct
John
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Write about the things that attract you. Choose your subjects the way you used to choose your toys: out of desire.
Harry Mathews / Author
Desire
Way
Writing
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I was immediately smitten with an attraction to this culture, not in the sense of high culture but of the basic way people behaved towards one another.
Harry Mathews / Author
Attraction
Smitten
Culture People Way
Basic
Behaved
Towards
Immediately
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I was stationed in Norfolk, Virginia, for a while, about which the less said the better, and then I was in the Mediterranean, about which the more said the better.
Harry Mathews / Author
Norfolk
Said
Virginia
Mediterranean
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Well, I had this little notion - I started writing when I was eleven, writing poetry. I was passionately addicted to it; it was my great refuge through adolescence.
Harry Mathews / Author
Adolescence
Eleven
Notion
Refuge
Passionately
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My idea was to go to Vienna to study conducting and perhaps play in an orchestra first, so I thought before I got to Vienna I could do with a little training in Paris.
Harry Mathews / Author
Conducting
Ideas
Orchestra
Paris
Play
Study
Training
Vienna
Perhaps
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My dream, I remember, when I went to boarding school, was to have a study all my own, a little nook someplace where nobody could get at me - nobody, like the football coach.
Harry Mathews / Author
Dream
Football
Football Coach
Remember When
School
Study
Football Me Remember
Boarding
Boarding School
Coach
Nook
Someplace
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I also had this mistaken dream, fantasy really - perhaps because I'm good at languages - of being able in both Italy and France to become someone else through my fluency in the language.
Harry Mathews / Author
Dream
Able
Fantasy
Fluency
France
Mistaken
Languages
Italy
Perhaps
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It has always been something I could do, and it may seem odd that in my case I seem to create an interesting narrative and frustrate the readers opportunities to follow it at every step.
Harry Mathews / Author
Opportunity
Interesting
May
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It has always been something I could do, and it may seem odd that in my case I seem to create an interesting narrative and frustrate the reader's opportunities to follow it at every step.
Harry Mathews / Author
Every Step
Narrative
Odd
Reader
Frustrate
Opportunities
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I thought Cheever was magnificent and that if I could write like him that would be the best I could do. And then I realized that what I really wanted to write had nothing to do with what he was doing.
Harry Mathews / Author
If I Could
Magnificent
Realized
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Syntax and vocabulary are overwhelming constraints --the rules that run us. Language is using us to talk --we think we're using the language, but language is doing the thinking, we're its slavish agents.
Harry Mathews / Author
Running
Thinking
Vocabulary
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Well, the great thing for me about poetry is that in good poems the dislocation of words, that is to say, the distance between what they say they're saying and what they are actually saying is at its greatest.
Harry Mathews / Author
Dislocation
Great Thing
They Say
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Translation is the paradigm, the exemplar of all writing.... It is translation that demonstrates most vividly the yearning for transformation that underlies every act involving speech, that supremely human gift.
Harry Mathews / Author
Speech
Transformation
Writing
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It's true, I had an extremely delicious life, but that was my life at home, and perhaps because I was only a child, or for whatever reasons, I found the company of others, especially other boys, quite terrifying and upsetting.
Harry Mathews / Author
Delicious
Life Home My Life
Extremely
Terrifying
Reasons
Upsetting
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It’s true, I had an extremely delicious life, but that was my life at home, and perhaps because I was only a child, or for whatever reasons, I found the company of others, especially other boys, quite terrifying and upsetting.
Harry Mathews / Author
Home
Boys
Children
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After the navy, I transferred to Harvard and finished there. I was there the spring term of 1951 and I stayed through the summer term and a whole other year, so I was able to do two years in a little less than a year and a half.
Harry Mathews / Author
Finished
Half
Harvard
Navy
Spring
Summer
Term
Years
Stayed
Transferred
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What I wanted to do and what I needed to do was something entirely different, and through reading Roussel I learned that I could do what I wanted all on my own and that I didn't have to rely on what had actually happened in my somewhat limited life and reading.
Harry Mathews / Author
Rely
Somewhat
Entirely
Life My Own Own
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Harry Mathews Quotes - Page 1

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