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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?

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
Question
Literature
Born
Validity
Nature
Describe
Great
Tension
World
Rely
Senses
Writer

More quotes by 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.
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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.
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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.
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I had learned so much about the world that I had decided to withdraw from it.
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You can either waste time worrying about a death that might not come or concentrate on what’s left to you.
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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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Trust your imagination. Don't be afraid to fail. Write. Revise. Revise. Revise.
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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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My mother is an artist, and I have a strong visual sense. I almost always choose the cover art for my books.
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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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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.
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But what if you discover that the price of purpose is to render invisible so many other things?
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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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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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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.
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I believe the best creative writing lessons live in the specifics.
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So many differing opinions and philosophies... are rarely housed under the roof of a single magazine.
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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.
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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.
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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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