Quote

A good novel should be deeply unsettling - its satisfactions should come from its authenticity and its formal coherence. We must feel something crucial is at stake.

Dana Spiotta

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Dana Spiotta
Age: 58
Born: 1966
Born: January 16
Author
Novelist
New Jersey
United States
Feels
Formal
Something
Crucial
Good
Deeply
Satisfactions
Satisfaction
Unsettling
Novel
Coherence
Come
Stake
Feel
Authenticity
Must
Stakes

More quotes by Dana Spiotta

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I like to mix the real and the imaginary. Sometimes it is characters inspired by real people I know or know of. Sometimes it is a named person from the common cultural dreamscape. And it is tricky, because they have a lot of associated ideas that come with them, and a lot of actual facts.
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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I am a great procrastinator. When the writing is going really well, the laundry piles up.
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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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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The writer has to be brave, I think.
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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I find poignancy in the moments when a person realizes that she has made mistakes. I am not as interested in the mistakes themselves as I am with the consequences and how the person responds to her realization.
Dana Spiotta
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There's lots of things that can't make it in the world that are worth making. There are lots of great artists who never make it, there are lots of great writers who don't get published - is it still worthwhile? Aren't we glad people are still doing it?
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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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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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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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 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
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The novel is about, for me, sustained and organized looking. I do think that people have a hunger for a sustained engagement, that concentration that the book can offer.
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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I have to say that movies have as much impact on me as music. And that I learned as much about narrative from movies as I did from reading novels, how to arrange stories, how to juxtapose things.
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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If you directly try to write about an idea, it will never be what you imagined. But if you're imagining through the building of sentences, through the characters, and paying attention to avoid ease and comfort yet still thinking about making the sentences work, you will get a shot at some real interesting stuff.
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