Quote

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

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
Even
Flight
Kafka
Like
Fantasy
Flights
Star
Angela
Writers
Carter
Personal
Firmly
Path
Paths
Create
Grounded
Stars
North
Nabokov

More quotes by 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
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
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 believe the best creative writing lessons live in the specifics.
Jeff VanderMeer
Image
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.
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
Silence creates it's own violence.
Jeff VanderMeer
Image
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.
Jeff VanderMeer
Image
If the reader enters a kind of immersive experience reading a book, then I have to enter a kind of immersive state to do my best work.
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
So many differing opinions and philosophies... are rarely housed under the roof of a single magazine.
Jeff VanderMeer
Image
History has shown us all too often the consequences of dreaming poorly or not at all.
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 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
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
Image
There's also a lot of gritty Americana type of bands. I actually have a lot of Britpop on my iPod, too.
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
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
Image
You can either waste time worrying about a death that might not come or concentrate on what’s left to you.
Jeff VanderMeer