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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

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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
Mind
Jumping
People
Catch
Particularly
Bottom
Trust
Risk
Averse
Told
Cliff
Also
Cliffs

More quotes by Jeff VanderMeer

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History has shown us all too often the consequences of dreaming poorly or not at all.
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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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If I could play an instrument, it would probably be a cello or an electric guitar.
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Who had the bigger burden? The one who had to watch the other person endure or the one who endured?
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If I wasn't a writer, I don't know what I'd be. Probably a marine biologist or something.
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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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My mom is an artist and my own fiction is deeply visual.
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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.
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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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I’ve got...ways of tricking my brain into getting what I need out of it
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There's also a lot of gritty Americana type of bands. I actually have a lot of Britpop on my iPod, too.
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What occurs after revelation and paralysis?
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Silence creates it's own violence.
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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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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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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.
Jeff VanderMeer
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My parents read to me a lot as a kid, and I started writing very early, probably spurred on by Aesop's fables. Then they gave me The Lord of the Rings way too early for me to fully understand what I was reading, which was actually kind of cool. It was almost better - comprehension's overrated when you're reading.
Jeff VanderMeer
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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
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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.
Jeff VanderMeer
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I believe the best creative writing lessons live in the specifics.
Jeff VanderMeer