Quote

A writer needs four things to achieve greatness, Pasquale: desire, disappointment, and the sea.” “That’s only three.” Alvis finished his wine. “You have to do disappointment twice.

Jess Walter

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Jess Walter
Age: 59
Born: 1965
Born: July 20
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Spokane
Washington
Sea
Writer
Achieve
Four
Twice
Desire
Disappointment
Three
Finished
Needs
Greatness
Things
Wine

More quotes by Jess Walter

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All we have is the story we tell.
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Yes, what is it like? Certainly not like she dreamed. But maybe that's okay. We want what we want. At home, she works herself into a frenzy worrying about what she isn't--and perhaps loses track of just where she is.
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I come from a newspaper background, so maybe Im attuned to current events.
Jess Walter
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I've been a dad since I was nineteen, so I think a lot about fatherhood and the power of that sacrifice in your life.
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He wished he could reassure his mother: a man wants many things in life, but when one of them is also the right thing, he would be a fool not to choose it.
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The first seven years that I wrote fiction, I sent out stories and a novel and made a total of $25.
Jess Walter
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If you come from money and you become an addict, you go to the Betty Ford Clinic, you get treatment. If you're living on the street and you're an addict, it's much harder to find your way out.
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And if a moment exists only in one's perception anyway, then perhaps the rush of feeling he has now is THE MOMENT, and not merely its shadow.
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He considered it a shame when people couldn't grasp the infinite-a failure not just of imagination but of simple vision.
Jess Walter
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I think so, too. I know I felt that way. For years. It was as if I was a character in a movie and the real action was about to start at any minute. But I think some people wait forever, and only at the end of their lives do they realize that their life has happened while they were waiting for it to start.
Jess Walter
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I wrote short stories for seven years and used to mail them out. You couldn't send them by e-mail. I called them manila boomerangs. I'd seal the self-addressed stamped envelope inside an envelope and I'd mail it off, and it would come back six weeks later with a rejection letter in it.
Jess Walter
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I think the path to becoming a writer has become more through the novel. It's easier to get a novel published than a book of stories, obviously, especially through big publishers.
Jess Walter
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I'm certainly eclectic in my writing.
Jess Walter
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His life was two lives now: the life he would have and the life he would forever wonder about.
Jess Walter
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What kind of wife would I be if I left your father simply because he was dead?
Jess Walter
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The first fiction I ever wrote was short stories. I was writing short stories in my late teens and early twenties, and I think it's how you teach yourself to write.
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At peace? Who but the insane would ever be at peace? What person who has enjoyed life could possibly think one is enough? Who could live even a day and not feel the sweet ache of regret?
Jess Walter
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I think suspense should be like any other color on a writers palette. I suppose Im in the minority but I think its crazy for literary fiction to divorce itself from stories that are suspenseful, and assign anything with cops or spies or criminals to some genre ghetto.
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Life, he thought, is a blatant act of imagination.
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I quickly decided my zombies weren't really zombies. It was instead something you called people who were on this club drug, who then exhibited aggressive behaviors. And then like everyone who writes about zombies, I found it was so much fun.
Jess Walter