Quote

I’ve got...ways of tricking my brain into getting what I need out of it

Jeff VanderMeer

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Jeff VanderMeer
Age: 56
Born: 1968
Born: July 7
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Bellefonte
Pennsylvania
Jeffrey Scott VanderMeer
Brain
Getting
Need
Needs
Way
Tricking
Ways

More quotes by Jeff VanderMeer

Image
I had learned so much about the world that I had decided to withdraw from it.
Jeff VanderMeer
Image
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.
Jeff VanderMeer
Image
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
Image
I see music as an aid. It overcomes my internal editor, especially when the music evokes the character or the mood I'm trying to build.
Jeff VanderMeer
Image
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.
Jeff VanderMeer
Image
If I wasn't a writer, I don't know what I'd be. Probably a marine biologist or something.
Jeff VanderMeer
Image
Angela Carter's fiction blew me away and really instilled a passion for writing, bolstered by Vladimir Nabokov. But in general, I can't point to any one thing. I just always loved books and writing.
Jeff VanderMeer
Image
So many differing opinions and philosophies... are rarely housed under the roof of a single magazine.
Jeff VanderMeer
Image
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.
Jeff VanderMeer
Image
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.
Jeff VanderMeer
Image
I always try to be alert to the potential for repetition, for a decaying orbit with regard to my use of technique, etc.
Jeff VanderMeer
Image
My mom is an artist and my own fiction is deeply visual.
Jeff VanderMeer
Image
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.
Jeff VanderMeer
Image
Angela Carter, Leonora Carrington, even nonsurrealists like Kafka and Nabokov - writers like these, who create paths between the firmly grounded and flights of fantasy, are my personal North Star.
Jeff VanderMeer
Image
Film fixes a precise visual image in the viewer's head. In fiction, you just hope you're precise enough to convey the intended effect.
Jeff VanderMeer
Image
I also am not particularly risk-averse - I don't mind jumping off a cliff if I trust the people who've told me they'll catch me at the bottom.
Jeff VanderMeer
Image
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
Image
My mother is an artist, and I have a strong visual sense. I almost always choose the cover art for my books.
Jeff VanderMeer
Image
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
Image
Silence creates it's own violence.
Jeff VanderMeer