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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
Great
Tension
World
Rely
Senses
Writer
Question
Literature
Born
Validity
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Describe

More quotes by Jeff VanderMeer

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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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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.
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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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I’ve got...ways of tricking my brain into getting what I need out of it
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I had learned so much about the world that I had decided to withdraw from it.
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Trust your imagination. Don't be afraid to fail. Write. Revise. Revise. Revise.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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I always try to be alert to the potential for repetition, for a decaying orbit with regard to my use of technique, etc.
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I believe the best creative writing lessons live in the specifics.
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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 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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So many differing opinions and philosophies... are rarely housed under the roof of a single magazine.
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