Quote

Getting an audience requires luck as well as talent. Some artists are private and shy. It costs them too much.

Dana Spiotta

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Dana Spiotta
Age: 58
Born: 1966
Born: January 16
Author
Novelist
New Jersey
United States
Getting
Costs
Artist
Requires
Wells
Luck
Well
Artists
Much
Private
Cost
Talent
Audience
Shy

More quotes by Dana Spiotta

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Tell me it's forbidden, unthinkable, and that's where I want to go. Because the chances are it's complicated, and the complications are meaningful.
Dana Spiotta
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I do want to write about social/cultural/historical context. I'm interested in relationships, in character, but within a specific social context. Which is kind of a political thing, I admit that. But it's what I'm interested in, and it's how I believe human behavior is legible.
Dana Spiotta
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I think most writers have to have a practice of writing. For me it is very early in the morning. I try to make it a separate world from the rest of my life.
Dana Spiotta
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My teaching forces me to articulate what I think works in a piece of fiction and how I think it works. All of that gives me energy as a writer.
Dana Spiotta
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All roads lead to Wall Street, but we feel the effects of Wall Street on every street corner. Certainly in Syracuse, N.Y., where I live.
Dana Spiotta
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Even a documentary portrait of a person that tries to be very accurate is shaped by the filmmaker in so many ways.
Dana Spiotta
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The issue isn't, Am I good enough? No. The issue is, Do I not have any other choice? Will and desire don't matter. Ability doesn't matter. Need is the only thing that matters.
Dana Spiotta
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For me writing is an organic process that starts with engaging the language and then thinking about the structure of the novel as you move along. Especially in revision you start to notice correlations. Things come up, not self-consciously, because you're busy feeling your way through sentences and trying to push the language into new places.
Dana Spiotta
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I am a great procrastinator. When the writing is going really well, the laundry piles up.
Dana Spiotta
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My teaching exists in a different part of my brain. However, I am lucky enough to teach very smart graduate students.
Dana Spiotta
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When I write characters, I need to hear their voice. As soon as I get them speaking, and I feel how they use language, I understand who they are and what they want.
Dana Spiotta
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I like to buy books for the kids in my family. I guess that's why they call me the 'mean' aunt.
Dana Spiotta
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It takes a long time to write a novel when you have to keep interrupting your work to earn money.
Dana Spiotta
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In order to be a living, breathing thing, a novel has to be failed in some kind of way. Or at least that's how I keep writing them.
Dana Spiotta
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Your memories from your early childhood seem to have such purchase on your emotions. They are so concrete.
Dana Spiotta
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I don't feel sentimental about the past, but I can't help noticing how hard it has become to keep a grip on anything. Maybe it's the totalizing impact of corporate culture, maybe it's the atomizing impact of technology.
Dana Spiotta
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The idea that you can live off the grid and just do your own thing is a very American idea - that you should be able to do your own thing, if you want to, if you're willing to pay the price for it. I think the price has gotten higher and higher.
Dana Spiotta
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I want what I write to be deeply engaging and strange and true.
Dana Spiotta
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I don't have a lot of skills, but one thing I can do is, I can compartmentalize. I can make that a little world that I can go back to, so I can be a waitress, or I can be a teacher, and then go and work on my book.
Dana Spiotta
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I take the outline from a real person as inspiration, but the in-line is totally made up. Which is why I usually invent imaginary names.
Dana Spiotta