Quotes by Leni Zumas - Page 1

There's relief in white space for the reader.
Leni Zumas / Writer
Space
Relief
White
Copy Quote
Portland is a pretty magnificent place to live.
Leni Zumas / Writer
Magnificent
Places To Live
Portland
Copy Quote
In my writing classes, I don't outlaw any genre writing.
Leni Zumas / Writer
Class
Outlaw
Writing
Copy Quote
The act of language or the act of denying language carries its own heaviness.
Leni Zumas / Writer
Carrie
Heaviness
Language
Copy Quote
Even in so-called realist or conventional writing there can be defamiliarization.
Leni Zumas / Writer
Conventional
Realist
Writing
Copy Quote
If a synesthetic person says the letter a is green, it can't ever be anything but green.
Leni Zumas / Writer
Green
Letters
Persons
Copy Quote
Sometimes you just feel like you could work forever on something and never know when it's done.
Leni Zumas / Writer
Done
Forever
Sometimes
Copy Quote
I'm always interested in encountering people who are synesthetic and seeing how they experience things.
Leni Zumas / Writer
People
Seeing
Copy Quote
For me, the genders are an essential element of numbers and letters, not something that could be removed from them.
Leni Zumas / Writer
Elements
Essentials
Numbers
Copy Quote
I felt sure about wanting to look at a person's life that had been limited or damaged, but not necessarily ennobled, by loss.
Leni Zumas / Writer
Looks
Loss
Persons
Copy Quote
I find myself writing protagonists who do feel pretty cut off from others but who want to make connections and aren't very good at it.
Leni Zumas / Writer
Connections
Cutting
Writing
Copy Quote
I cut hundreds of pages from my book because I felt myself being reiterative or redundant. Sometimes I wanted to leave just hints of things.
Leni Zumas / Writer
Book
Cutting
Hints
Copy Quote
As someone who played music and never got famous, and remembers little fragments of that, I don't remember life as a dramatic flamboyant thing.
Leni Zumas / Writer
Dramatic
Littles
Remember
Copy Quote
In my short stories there's a lot of focus on people successfully and not successfully responding to some sorts of discomforts or instabilities.
Leni Zumas / Writer
Focus
People
Stories
Copy Quote
When I watch students make particular decisions about language, structure, and form, it sharpens my own thinking and my own development as a writer.
Leni Zumas / Writer
Decision
Thinking
Watches
Copy Quote
Part of being a writer is feeling that constant dissatisfaction, thinking about what else you could do, and also knowing when it's time to leave a project.
Leni Zumas / Writer
Feelings
Knowing
Thinking
Copy Quote
Giving the reader the space to move around and be active, and encourage their active response is important to me. That will connect the reader more to the text.
Leni Zumas / Writer
Space
Giving
Moving
Copy Quote
Synesthesia has interested me for a long time, both as a literary device and as a puncturing of the membranes that organize how the world comes into someone's head.
Leni Zumas / Writer
Long
Membranes
World
Copy Quote
I am fascinated by tiny, incremental changes, almost imperceptible shifts in how people orient themselves in the world, because those are in some ways the most hopeful.
Leni Zumas / Writer
Hopeful
People
World
Copy Quote
There's always something else to work on and different solutions to these problems in the next thing. We each have a certain set of obsessions which we each cycle through.
Leni Zumas / Writer
Different
Next
Problem
Copy Quote
I don't know whose sensibility I'm responding to. Until someone starts pushing against what they've inherited and starts making their own decisions about language, it's difficult.
Leni Zumas / Writer
Decision
Language
Pushing
Copy Quote
I have what I came to find in my research is a mild form of synesthesia, though I never would have labeled it as such. It's how I think about numbers and letters. They all have inherent genders.
Leni Zumas / Writer
Numbers
Research
Thinking
Copy Quote
I started reading contemporary fiction in college or right after college. It wasn't as if I was steeped in experimental minimalism when I was twelve or something. I was reading The Witch of Blackbird Pond.
Leni Zumas / Writer
College
Contemporary Fiction
Reading
Copy Quote
Another obligation that I have as a teacher is to make available to students a range of options and devices and approaches, rather than saying "well here's one way to do it and that's the only way that's good."
Leni Zumas / Writer
Teacher
Students
Way
Copy Quote
In undergraduate classes, I often see writers who are still simply imitating. I mean, we all imitate - that's how we learn to speak or write in the first place - but they're writing a Dean Koontz novel or something.
Leni Zumas / Writer
Class
Mean
Writing
Copy Quote
So often we think of a wound or a loss as making a person feel more deeply, become a better person. But I don't think that always happens. I think it can constrict people's lives, especially if they don't push beyond it.
Leni Zumas / Writer
Loss
People
Thinking
Copy Quote
It just fascinates me, those private mechanisms that we use to make sense of the world - whether they have to do with the five senses or not. I think literature is one of the only kinds of art that truly lets us into that.
Leni Zumas / Writer
Art
Five Senses
Thinking
Copy Quote
Even while I was working on the novel I would also write short stories as relief, just to be in a wieldier world that could negotiated more easily and more quickly. In the novel, I even changed the narrator from a man to a woman.
Leni Zumas / Writer
Men
Narrators
Writing
Copy Quote
In general, teaching writing makes me a far better reader because there's so many ways to write a good sentence or a good story, and as a teacher I'm obliged to consider them all, rather than staying in the safety of my own tendencies.
Leni Zumas / Writer
Teacher
Teaching
Writing
Copy Quote
Whether consciously or unconsciously, I felt myself drawn to writing a female character who was pretty flawed and not very virtuous or wonderful or attractive in these ways that throughout literary history we've come to expect female characters to be.
Leni Zumas / Writer
Character
Way
Writing
Copy Quote

Related Writer Authors

Voltaire
Writer
Sunday, Nov 21, 1694
Saturday, May 30, 1778
Oscar Wilde
Writer
Monday, Oct 16, 1854
Friday, Nov 30, 1900
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Writer
Thursday, Aug 28, 1749
Thursday, Mar 22, 1832
Dr. Seuss
Writer
Wednesday, Mar 02, 1904
Tuesday, Sep 24, 1991
Zoltan Istvan
Writer
Zoe Valdes
Writer
Saturday, May 02, 1959
Zlata Filipović
Writer
Wednesday, Dec 03, 1980
Zitkala-Sa
Writer
Tuesday, Feb 22, 1876
Wednesday, Jan 26, 1938
Ziauddin Sardar
Writer
Wednesday, Oct 31, 1951
Zelig Pliskin
Writer
Zan Perrion
Writer
Saturday, Jul 02, 1966
Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor
Writer
Yusuf Idris
Writer
Thursday, May 19, 1927
Thursday, Aug 01, 1991
Young-Ha Kim
Writer
Monday, Nov 11, 1968
Yoshiki Nakamura
Writer
Tuesday, Jun 17, 1969

View All Writer Quotes

Top Authors

Julius Caesar
Roman Dictator
Thursday, Jan 01, 1970
Thomas Aquinas
Priest
Tuesday, Jan 28, 1225
Wednesday, Mar 07, 1274
John Lewis
U.s. Representative
Wednesday, Feb 21, 1940
Saint Augustine
Saint
Saturday, Nov 13, 0354
Wednesday, Aug 28, 0430
Sun Tzu
Strategist
Thursday, Jan 01, 1970
Thursday, Jan 01, 1970
Kobe Bryant
Basketball Player
Wednesday, Aug 23, 1978
Billy Graham
Evangelist
Thursday, Nov 07, 1918
Les Brown
Author
Saturday, Feb 17, 1945
Rodney Dangerfield
Comedian
Tuesday, Nov 22, 1921
Tuesday, Oct 05, 2004
Edgar Allan Poe
Author
Thursday, Jan 19, 1809
Sunday, Oct 07, 1849
Robin Williams
Actor
Saturday, Jul 21, 1951
Monday, Aug 11, 2014
Will Rogers
Actor
Tuesday, Nov 04, 1879
Thursday, Aug 15, 1935
Wayne Dyer
Author
Friday, May 10, 1940
Saturday, Aug 29, 2015
Michael Jordan
Basketball Player
Sunday, Feb 17, 1963
Pope Francis
Thursday, Dec 17, 1936

View All Authors

Leni Zumas Quotes - Page 1

App & Tools

Related Writer Authors

Popular Topic Tags

Top Authors

Share This Page

Stay Connected

App & Tools

Related Writer Authors

Popular Topic Tags

Top Authors

Share This Page