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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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Dana Spiotta
Age: 58
Born: 1966
Born: January 16
Author
Novelist
New Jersey
United States
Thinking
Writer
Gives
Pieces
Fiction
Articulate
Force
Forces
Energy
Piece
Giving
Works
Think
Teaching
More quotes by Dana Spiotta
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
My teaching exists in a different part of my brain. However, I am lucky enough to teach very smart graduate students.
Dana Spiotta
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
Even if we try to see people in our lives accurately, it is distorted by our own wants and prejudices and experiences.
Dana Spiotta
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
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
Even a documentary portrait of a person that tries to be very accurate is shaped by the filmmaker in so many ways.
Dana Spiotta
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
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
I like to buy books for the kids in my family. I guess that's why they call me the 'mean' aunt.
Dana Spiotta
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
I think there's a false division people sometimes make in describing literary novels, where there are people who write systems novels, or novels of ideas, and there are people who write about emotional things in which the movement is character driven. But no good novels are divisible in that way.
Dana Spiotta
I like the challenge of creating a world with only sentences.
Dana Spiotta
Although a great restaurant experience must include great food, a bad restaurant experience can be achieved through bad service alone. Ideally, service is invisible. You notice it only when something goes wrong.
Dana Spiotta
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
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
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
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
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
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
