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I have always tended toward a lush prose style, but I take care to modulate it from story to story and to strip it down entirely when necessary.

Jeff VanderMeer

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Jeff VanderMeer
Age: 56
Born: 1968
Born: July 7
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Bellefonte
Pennsylvania
Jeffrey Scott VanderMeer
Toward
Necessary
Style
Modulate
Story
Lush
Stories
Tended
Care
Strip
Take
Prose
Always
Entirely

More quotes by Jeff VanderMeer

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It is the nature of the writer to question the validity of his world and yet rely on his senses to describe it. From what other tension can great literature be born?
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A lot of the creature comforts and the things we take for granted, are not sustainable, especially at current population levels. And so, it's not just simply a matter of changing over to solar. It's a matter of changing our philosophies. Of learning to live, more or less, mid- or post-apocalyptic, whatever apocalyptic means.
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The stories in Get In Trouble confirm once again that Kelly Link is a modern virtuoso of the form-playful and subversive required reading for anyone who loves short fiction.
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The world is a mysterious place and the very limitation of our senses in exploring it means we are sometimes aware of there being something beyond our ken.
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When they give you things, ask yourself why. When you're grateful to them for giving you the things you should have anyway, ask yourself why.
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Dreams, though, are just one kind of inspiration - no more or less special than something in a newspaper article or from the world around you sparking inspiration.
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I like to go through the zine sections of local bookstores when on the road and have found a lot of really great kind of underground stuff that way. It all feeds into everything else.
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History has shown us all too often the consequences of dreaming poorly or not at all.
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What occurs after revelation and paralysis?
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My mother is an artist, and I have a strong visual sense. I almost always choose the cover art for my books. I've learned that the more I collaborate, like by having someone do a soundtrack to one of my books, the more I see my own work differently.
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Silence creates it's own violence.
Jeff VanderMeer
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My mom is an artist and my own fiction is deeply visual.
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The best visual book I can think of is Lynda Barry's What It Is, but although I refer to it all the time it's not a creative writing book per se.
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Once you realize there's less logic in human institutions than you once thought, you see the narrative potential in just about everything around you. Sometimes, in fact, it seems as if the human world runs on inefficiency and erratic behavior.
Jeff VanderMeer
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My best time to write is right after coffee and breakfast - four eggs because, full disclosure: I'm really a komodo dragon - and that's because then I'm energized but not so awake that the critical voice clicks on, the voice that sometimes says, Don't write that, or Man, that sentence is terrible - you should give up and go pet the cats.
Jeff VanderMeer
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My mother is an artist, and I have a strong visual sense. I almost always choose the cover art for my books.
Jeff VanderMeer
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I’ve got...ways of tricking my brain into getting what I need out of it
Jeff VanderMeer
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Who had the bigger burden? The one who had to watch the other person endure or the one who endured?
Jeff VanderMeer
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The music I listen to while writing is really scene-specific. It's just a great motivator, a way to put myself in the mood.
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I've always wrestled with the difference between plot and structure, and after re-reading a lot of writing books I realized I wasn't alone.
Jeff VanderMeer