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Jess Walter Inspirational Quotes (44)

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I wrote short stories for seven years and used to mail them out. You couldn't send them by e-mail. I called them manila boomerangs. I'd seal the self-addressed stamped envelope inside an envelope and I'd mail it off, and it would come back six weeks later with a rejection letter in it.
Jess Walter
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I doubt the terrorists saw 9/11 as a teaching opportunity. And we're not really a culture geared to anything as humble as 'learning.' But I was disappointed in how quickly everyone wanted to get back to normal. It was as if we watched terrorism on TV for a while, then got bored and turned back to 'American Idol.'
Jess Walter
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Maybe every couple lived in the gaps between conversations, unable to say the important things for fear they had already been said, or couldn't be said maybe every relationship started over every time two people came together.
Jess Walter
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I think suspense should be like any other color on a writers palette. I suppose Im in the minority but I think its crazy for literary fiction to divorce itself from stories that are suspenseful, and assign anything with cops or spies or criminals to some genre ghetto.
Jess Walter
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I've been a dad since I was nineteen, so I think a lot about fatherhood and the power of that sacrifice in your life.
Jess Walter
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He thought it might be the most intimate thing possible, to fall asleep next to someone in the afternoon.
Jess Walter
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He considered it a shame when people couldn't grasp the infinite-a failure not just of imagination but of simple vision.
Jess Walter
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What kind of wife would I be if I left your father simply because he was dead?
Jess Walter
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And because he felt like he might burst open and because he lacked the dexterity in English to say all that he was thinking--how in his estimation, the more you lived the more regret and longing you suffered, that life was a glorious catastrophe--Pasquale Tursi said, only, Yes.
Jess Walter
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I pretty much drink a cup of coffee, write in my journal for a while, and then sit at a computer in my office and torture the keys. My one saving grace as a writer is that, if I'm having trouble with the novel I'm writing, I write something else, a poem or a short story. I try to avoid writer's block by always writing something.
Jess Walter
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Life, he thought, is a blatant act of imagination.
Jess Walter
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Some movie I was in, I forget which one, some awful little movie, a reviewer said, What is Jessica Walter doing in this movie? And I said, Hello? Trying to make a living?
Jessica Walter
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The first fiction I ever wrote was short stories. I was writing short stories in my late teens and early twenties, and I think it's how you teach yourself to write.
Jess Walter
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All we have is the story we tell. Everything we do, every decision we make, our strength, weakness, motivation, history, and character-what we believe-none of it is real it's all part of the story we tell. But here's the thing: it's our goddamned story!
Jess Walter
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Because I'm a novelist, I think in terms of structure. The way I keep going is through structure. It's what inspires me and pushes me through.
Jess Walter
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If you come from money and you become an addict, you go to the Betty Ford Clinic, you get treatment. If you're living on the street and you're an addict, it's much harder to find your way out.
Jess Walter
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I don't know a family that isn't touched by some sort of addiction.
Jess Walter
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There are only two good outcomes for a quest like this, the hope of the serendipitous savant — sail for Asia and stumble on America — and the hope of scarecrows and tin men: that you find out you had the thing you sought all along.
Jess Walter
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I come from a newspaper background, so maybe Im attuned to current events.
Jess Walter
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If a police officer arrests a mime, does he need to tell him he has the right to remain silent.
Jess Walter
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Nobody can hide their birthdays anymore, so there's no point in lying.
Jessica Walter
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I quickly decided my zombies weren't really zombies. It was instead something you called people who were on this club drug, who then exhibited aggressive behaviors. And then like everyone who writes about zombies, I found it was so much fun.
Jess Walter
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He found himself in habiting the vast, empty plateau where most people live, between boredom and contentment.
Jess Walter
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A writer needs four things to achieve greatness, Pasquale: desire, disappointment, and the sea.” “That’s only three.” Alvis finished his wine. “You have to do disappointment twice.
Jess Walter
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