Quote

There seem to be two ways of generating interest from the reader: withholding information or by telling the reader on the first page exactly what's going to happen.

Christopher Bollen

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Christopher Bollen
Age: 48
Born: 1975
Born: November 26
Journalist
Novelist
Cincinnati
Ohio
Ways
Withholding
Happen
Generating
Page
Interest
Telling
First
Exactly
Going
Reader
Seem
Information

More quotes by Christopher Bollen

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I like to be alone, I mean, I really love to be alone more than anything else, and I don't really like to talk about myself to death, and I don't like to share too much, and I don't really have dreams of extreme fame or even extreme respect.
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There's a structure to a detective story that I can easily understand. I understand playing that particular game. It's like solving a puzzle. Or creating a puzzle.
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I just think, as writers, especially with a book that takes years to write, you sort of wake up every morning hoping and praying that you can make it work for the day.
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It's just as political, what you do in the bedroom is just as political as what you do in public.
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I like change. I've never really had much consistency in my life, you know, from everyday work to my living situation to whether or not I'm going to be in L.A. The one constant thing in my life is my friends and family, which is all I need
Christopher Bollen
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I was a very scared child.
Christopher Bollen
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I had lived in New York since 1996, sometimes in the worst neighborhoods, without even locking my door half the time.
Christopher Bollen
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My parents were great parents, but for some bizarre reason they allowed me to watch whatever I wanted on TV, we had cable. And I constantly watched horror movies.
Christopher Bollen
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Going out into the country after living in the city is a loss of control.
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If you've been in the art world for more than eight years, you realize another generation is making the exact same work as the previous generation - but treating it like it's never been done before. It becomes very cyclical very quickly.
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It's really hard to write about art in general. But it's exceptionally hard to fictionalize art and make work that isn't a parody, or is something that could withstand critique and exist in the art world as a valuable object, or a true piece.
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Secrets are never secure because they are always at risk of being found out.
Christopher Bollen
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You find when you're writing a detective story that you're actually not trying to solve anything. You're trying to stop the reader from solving the puzzle.
Christopher Bollen
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I was obsessed with Agatha Christie in sixth grade.
Christopher Bollen
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Every time I try to write on vacation, I fail miserably.
Christopher Bollen
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The first horror movie I saw, in first or second grade, was My Bloody Valentine [1981], where there's a deranged killer in a miner mask stalking a small coal town.
Christopher Bollen
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I'm convinced I was the only kid ever who had a Death on the Nile [1978] movie poster and a Murder on the Orient Express [1974] movie poster on his bedroom walls.
Christopher Bollen
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We've come under the influence of television, where in all honesty we can follow a show that could just get cancelled midway through the season and the entire plotline never resolves itself.
Christopher Bollen
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My strength is character. I'm pretty good at building walking-talking humans with brains like beehives.
Christopher Bollen
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It's always fun to welcome new people into your life. When dating anyone or becoming friends with anyone who has a different profession, a different life, it opens doors. All my friends here do such different creative things. It's so awesome.
Christopher Bollen