Quotes by Jonathan Dee - Page 1 | QuoteForever

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You never want to have to give your child bad news of any kind.
Jonathan Dee / Novelist
Bad News
Children
Giving
Want
Your Child
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Novels are a kind of experiment in selfhood, for the reader as well as for the author.
Jonathan Dee / Novelist
Kind
Novel
Reader
Wells
Author
Experiment
Novels
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The first draft often is really fast, and I'd be terribly ashamed if anybody ever saw it.
Jonathan Dee / Novelist
Ashamed
Draft
Terribly
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I seem to have a talent for writing endings that seem just right to me but that frustrate other people.
Jonathan Dee / Novelist
People
Talent
Writing
Me Talent People
Endings
Frustrate
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More than periods where I don't write anything, I have periods where I just write junk and I know I'm writing junk but I can't stop.
Jonathan Dee / Novelist
Junk
Periods
Writing
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I worry that's what people are going to think about me if they kind of go backwards. But if that didn't happen to you, I'll feel better.
Jonathan Dee / Novelist
Feel Better
People
Thinking
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Kenneth Branagh. There was a time in my life when people would tell me constantly that I look like him. I could do a lot worse than that.
Jonathan Dee / Novelist
Kenneth
Looks
People
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I personally feel I still have so much to learn as a writer; each novel is better than the one before, just because I'm getting better at it.
Jonathan Dee / Novelist
Get Better
Novel
Getting Better
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I think that good storytelling of any kind does promote a humility in that it encourages you to see the world the way that other people see it.
Jonathan Dee / Novelist
Humility
Good World People
Encourages
Promote
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New York is ultimately not the synthesis but merely the sum of its unfathomable subjectivities, its personal histories, its uncategorisable figures.
Jonathan Dee / Novelist
New York
Figures
Personal History
Subjectivity
Synthesis
Unfathomable
Histories
Merely
Sum
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That's always the most productive research - research into tone, into voice. Facts are nice, too, but facts are more raw material than creative inspiration.
Jonathan Dee / Novelist
Inspiration
Tone
Raw
Raw Material
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When I'm composing a scene for the first time, I try to imitate my character. The less critical distance the better - particularly when they're acting badly.
Jonathan Dee / Novelist
Composing
Critical
Distance
Badly
Imitate
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Tween programming is so retro that the shows even have theme songs, something the quest for more commercial time drove out of prime-time television years ago.
Jonathan Dee / Novelist
Programming
Retro
Drove
Quest
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You should not really entertaining anyone else, but trying to be yourself, because there are already more good books than you or I could ever read in our lifetime.
Jonathan Dee / Novelist
Being Yourself
Book
Trying
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The don't-ask-don't-tell approach to plot and character that 'The Hurt Locker' relies on to set itself in motion doesn't offend me politically. It offends me as a storyteller.
Jonathan Dee / Novelist
Plot
Offend
Locker
Motion
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That's a long way of saying no, I'm always too bound up in thinking about the characters in whatever I'm working on and trying to make good to dwell on characters from previous books.
Jonathan Dee / Novelist
Book
Character
Thinking
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I am hopelessly devoted to paper. Nothing against e-readers of any sort - anything that keeps people reading is okay by me - but I am not, historically, an early adopter of such things.
Jonathan Dee / Novelist
Devoted
Okay
Paper
I Am Me People
Me I Am People
Historically
Hopelessly
Such Things
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It's nice to have something else going on when a book comes out so you're not just sitting by the phone, waiting for things to happen. You don't want to be the guy Googling himself all day.
Jonathan Dee / Novelist
Waiting
All Day
Something Else
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I once saw John Updike get in front of a crowd and read a story that he'd written in 1958, and I just thought, I can't even look at stuff I wrote a year ago, I can't believe he's doing this.
Jonathan Dee / Novelist
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Luckily for you, you can close the book The Postman Always Rings Twice and break out of it, and James M. Cain can't. I can't think of any redeeming feature he has, but he's extremely compelling.
Jonathan Dee / Novelist
Book
Break
Thinking
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There's no path to being a writer that's applicable to everyone. Some young writers have the fortitude to work in a vacuum. For me, it was important to have some sense that my failures weren't unique.
Jonathan Dee / Novelist
Fortitude
Young Writers
Applicable
Work Path Me
Vacuum
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Writers like to feel sorry for themselves, which is easy to do in private, but when called on to feel sorry for ourselves in social situations, we will often do so by sharing terrible book tour stories.
Jonathan Dee / Novelist
Sorry
Book Tour
Sharing
Tour
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I'm not interested in current events per se, but I am interested in how certain aspects of social or public life that might seem ultra-contemporary actually take their place in a long American continuum.
Jonathan Dee / Novelist
Continuum
Current Events
Not Interested
Public Life
Aspects
Life I Am Long
Life Long I Am
Current
Per
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It's not really an original idea, but there's something that goes along with power and celebrity that starts to make you feel like you're impervious to certain forces that the rest of us have to live with.
Jonathan Dee / Novelist
Impervious
Forces
Original Idea
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You never want to be in a position where your reader feels like you're passing judgment on your own characters. Any novel where you feel like the author is talking to the reader over the characters' heads is in a bad place.
Jonathan Dee / Novelist
Passing
Reader
Author
Heads
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John Dos Passos, Raymond Carver, Flaubert and William Maxwell were all very influential when I first started writing. Now, the writers I'm most interested in are the writers who are most unlike me: for example, Denis Johnson.
Jonathan Dee / Novelist
Carver
Influential
Johnson
Maxwell
For Example
William
Unlike
Raymond
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Don't get me wrong: I can and do waste time on the Internet with the best of them, but in some respects, I am an embarrassingly analog guy. I am not on Facebook. I write whole books on yellow legal pads. I do not own a cell phone.
Jonathan Dee / Novelist
Legal
Analog
Cell Phone
Pads
Waste
Yellow
Cell
Facebook
Respects
Waste Time
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Those who know New York City primarily through tourism or mass culture may think of us natives as possessing certain shared characteristics, not all of them flattering. But the true, volatile charisma of New York lies in how balkanised it is.
Jonathan Dee / Novelist
New York
Characteristics
Flattering
Lying
Mass
Mass Culture
New York City
Possessing
Thinking
Tourism
Natives
Primarily
Shared
Volatile
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When I read a book I liked, I would get a pen and one of my father's legal pads and rewrite it from memory as if I had thought of it myself. It was a clear sign that I wanted to be involved in writing, even if it was just pretend at that point.
Jonathan Dee / Novelist
Legal
Pads
Pretend
Memory
Pen
Rewrite
Sign
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Children go from being a kind of cultural protectorate to the Junior Auxiliary of the tube-watching nation at large, and programs are designed for them on the same principle as they're designed for grown-ups: as a way to sell eyeballs to advertisers.
Jonathan Dee / Novelist
Eyeballs
Advertiser
Cultural
Designed
Grown-Ups
Programs
Junior
Principle
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'Anna Karenina.' I read it in college. I was so engrossed that I couldn't stop reading it and neglected all my other studies. I would go to the library even on nice warm weekends and just lock myself up. I think that was the first time that I felt transformed by a book.
Jonathan Dee / Novelist
Anna
Neglected
Transformed
Warm
Time Myself Stop
Lock
Studies
Weekends
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If you look at the practice of 'crisis management,' and maybe squint at it a little, you can make out in the corners of your vision the ghosts or the vestiges of a much older, but still thoroughly American, form of public life, one centered not on public opinion but on religion.
Jonathan Dee / Novelist
Corners
Crisis
Management
Public Life
Centered
Ghosts
Thoroughly
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I wrote my first novel in the same conditions as most first novelists - I had a full-time job, I shared an apartment, I had no time - and so I became a compulsive outliner of everything. Ever since then, my process has consisted of trying to forcibly rid myself of that compulsion.
Jonathan Dee / Novelist
Compulsion
Conditions
Novelists
Full-Time
Full-Time Job
No Time
Rid
Shared
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The first draft of everything, I write longhand. One of the nice things about that is that it makes you keep going. If you write a bad sentence on the computer, then it's very tempting to go back and fidget with it and spend another 20 minutes trying to make it into a good sentence.
Jonathan Dee / Novelist
Computer
Nice
Nice Things
Tempting
Trying
Writing
Good Keep Going Keep
Draft
Longhand
Sentence
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I have no desire to write historical anything or futuristic anything - I want to find a way to get at the essence of what it's like to be alive now. The reason why great novels from centuries ago are still great is because that's what they were doing; it's like a message from another culture.
Jonathan Dee / Novelist
Essence
Futuristic
Centuries
No Desire
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Here is what I am not going to do: I am not going to go to a restaurant, take pictures of my food, download them, and call that a blog. That is beyond the pale. The Internet is such a bazaar of self-indulgences that I don't know why that particular one should bug me so much. But it really does.
Jonathan Dee / Novelist
Pale
Food I Am Me
Blog
Bug
Download
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In order to describe a particular subculture, you might want to portray people who are typical or representative of that subculture; but to dramatize it, to make it an interesting setting for a story, you want to bring someone anomalous into that setting, to see how she conforms to it, and it to her.
Jonathan Dee / Novelist
Setting
Subculture
Typical
Describe
Portray
Representative
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I don't want to make it sound too much like I'm telling people how to read the book A Thousand Pardons, but what Ben Armstead is doing, he's doing more or less on purpose as a very elaborate way of making a sacrifice in his personal life. He needs to start over. This is how he chooses to do it - by blowing up where he is.
Jonathan Dee / Novelist
Book
People
Sacrifice
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I hesitate to say yes - I had writer's block, because I know there are people who've had really serious cases of it, and I've never been paralyzed like that, but I definitely get blocked sometimes. More than periods where I don't write anything, I have periods where I just write junk and I know I'm writing junk but I can't stop.
Jonathan Dee / Novelist
Block
People
Writing
Copy Quote
The first draft of everything, I write longhand. One of the nice things about that is that it makes you keep going. If you write a bad sentence on the computer, then it's very tempting to go back and fidget with it and spend another 20 minutes trying to make it into a good sentence. When you're handwriting, you really just have to move on.
Jonathan Dee / Novelist
Moving
Nice
Writing
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A Thousand Pardons began at the beginning. I wanted it to be one continuous, almost breathless kind of story. In order to do that, it's really hard not to begin at the beginning. There's such a chain of consequence to everything that happens to main characters - it's very hard to break it apart and still be able to hold the plot in your head.
Jonathan Dee / Novelist
Break
Character
Kind
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In high school, I had a teacher there who was really great to me and with whom I finally dared to admit I wanted to be a writer myself, and we did a project where I wrote terrible, 17-year-old fiction. But I remember a couple of the stories. I'd love it if I could read with pride something that I wrote that long ago, but it hasn't happened yet.
Jonathan Dee / Novelist
Teacher
Couple
School
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Another big moment in terms of that feeling was David Petraeus: if the director of the CIA can't get away with having a secret relationship, then what hope do you have? It's not really an original idea, but there's something that goes along with power and celebrity that starts to make you feel like you're impervious to certain forces that the rest of us have to live with.
Jonathan Dee / Novelist
Feelings
Moments
Secret
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The Postman Always Rings Twice that's a book that I think every writer should read - that has to do with technique. But it's also a novel narrated by a guy who has decided by page 11 that he's fallen in love with a woman, and they're going to murder her husband so they can be together. There's nothing remotely likeable about him, but James M. Cain brings you so far into his head that, at a certain point, you have that uncomfortable but also thrilling sensation of seeing things exactly as he sees it.
Jonathan Dee / Novelist
Book
Husband
Thinking
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You see that in the news constantly; done both the right way and the wrong way. The most recent example I can think of, obviously, is Lance Armstrong, who got it all wrong. Who wanted to apologize strategically, instead of abjectly. What got me interested was the repetitive nature of it. There's something so ritualized about it. Then the ritual needs to be reenacted very carefully and pretty frequently - Tiger Woods, and now Manti Te'o and Lance Armstrong, and a little earlier Anthony Weiner or Eliot Spitzer.
Jonathan Dee / Novelist
Apologizing
Done
Thinking
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That's really the essence of what any fiction writer does. Some of it is research-based, but most of it is a really long-term, imaginative, empathetic effort to see the world the way someone whose experiences remote from yours might see it. Not every writer works that way; some writers make a wonderful career out of writing books that adhere very closely to how they view the world. The further I go with this, the more interested I get in trying to imagine my way into other perspectives that at first seem foreign to me.
Jonathan Dee / Novelist
Book
Perspective
Writing
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One of my favorite pieces of advice about being a writer came from a very formative teacher I had as an undergraduate, named John Hersey. On our last day of class together, which was also John Hersey last day before retirement, he said, "Remember, the world doesn't need any new writers." Which at first didn't seem like great advice, but when you unpacked it, it was really that it's not enough to be confident in what you do; be conscious of bringing something to the world of readers and writers that it hasn't seen before. Something idiosyncratic.
Jonathan Dee / Novelist
Teacher
Advice
Retirement
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