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I was a nerdy kid and I was writing and showing other fellows who are still my friends what I was writing. We were sharing that and kept sharing it. The experiences they had were so different than mine.

Alejandro Zambra

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Alejandro Zambra
Age: 49
Born: 1975
Born: July 24
Literary Critic
Poet
Writer
Santiago
Chile
Mines
Mine
Friends
Nerdy
Kids
Sharing
Stills
Showing
Still
Fellows
Different
Kept
Writing
Experiences

More quotes by Alejandro Zambra

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I am still trying to find out things. And I inevitably tell myself the story in different ways every time I think about it.
Alejandro Zambra
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When you read a novel, you know what to expect because you've been reading novels for a long time.
Alejandro Zambra
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Everything has been said and everything has been done, but you still feel like you are looking for something.
Alejandro Zambra
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If you write, and you are really alone (writing is a lonely thing), you learn to be alone without suffering. When you read, you also learn to do this. When you write, you deal with things.
Alejandro Zambra
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You are told that you have to eliminate un-useful sentences, but as a writer you know how important details are.
Alejandro Zambra
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Literature is about getting in touch. It sounds so hippie, but it really is about sharing stuff. We are a community that doesn't seem to be important for the rest of society, but we are people who want to get in touch - really in touch. We want to be thinking together.
Alejandro Zambra
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Every story, every poem, every written piece is about belonging. There is a me, there is a we, there is an us, and we want to belong to it or we don't want to belong. You can read every story with this as its main focus.
Alejandro Zambra
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For me, writing is a way of finding out about things I didn't know before I began writing.
Alejandro Zambra
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We rely too much on the people we share our lives with. We hold them responsible for things they are not even aware of. We start blaming them.
Alejandro Zambra
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I was going to be a memory when I grew up.
Alejandro Zambra
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As a child, all you see is that adults are not playing. Adults are not talking too much. Adults don't want to relate to each other.
Alejandro Zambra
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I think about Chilean literature as a family, because I grew up reading the literature of my country. I feel like I have fathers and stepfathers and a lot of brothers and sisters and distant cousins and all that.
Alejandro Zambra
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I knew little, but at least I knew that: no one could speak for someone else. That although we might want to tell other people's stories, we always end up telling our own.
Alejandro Zambra
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Publishing my book is like giving it away. At first you start talking about it, but you are basically letting go. I won't say it's like giving birth because I haven't given birth. It's more like when your children leave home.
Alejandro Zambra
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The ways in which a standardized language test induces storytelling, for example, is the opposite of creative writing you have to learn a logical way to start a story, whereas in creative writing you may begin at the end or begin at the middle of the story.
Alejandro Zambra
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I remember thinking, without pride of self-pity, that I was not rich or poor, that I wasn't good or bad. But that was difficult: to be neither good nor bad. It seemed to me, in the end, the same as being bad.
Alejandro Zambra
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To read is to cover one's face. And to write is to show it.
Alejandro Zambra
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You're looking for something, I don't know what I'm looking for, but I'm looking. Writing is a lot about that. When you write a poem. When you write a novel.
Alejandro Zambra
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I don't have any doubts that I need writing. I need it personally because this is the way I think.
Alejandro Zambra
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I've been writing most of my life it's just something I do.
Alejandro Zambra