Quote

A beginning idea for a book might be: a boy emerges from a hole in the ground. He enters a house. The book will take place in the first ten minutes following his arrival.

Jesse Ball

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Jesse Ball
Age: 46
Born: 1978
Born: June 7
Novelist
Poet
Down Meadows
New York (former)
Firsts
Beginning
Arrivals
Book
Minutes
Emerges
First
Boys
Enters
Take
Idea
Hole
House
Holes
Place
Ten
Ideas
Following
Might
Ground
Arrival

More quotes by Jesse Ball

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I want to say less, and it's easier to say less.
Jesse Ball
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Clarity is the most important thing to me - in thinking - and so I try in the books to be as clear as possible.
Jesse Ball
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I believe my friends think I'm funny. All the books are full of humor. Maybe it is a quiet sort of humor that masquerades as not-much-at-all. It is certainly easy to miss.
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If he acts, if he doesn't, it's meaningless. The whole thing goes forward. No one is important. No one at all.
Jesse Ball
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I like small books. I like durable books. I like plain books. I like small type and thin pages.
Jesse Ball
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The old man began to sing. His voice was very lovely and obviously a part of something that the world had disposed of in its haste, evidence of a grander, kinder past.
Jesse Ball
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It is at the heart of our human enterprise, that is to say, at the heart of society, to allow consensus a power it ought not to have.
Jesse Ball
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I'm clearer now in what I want to say, and I know better how to say just that.
Jesse Ball
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A book can just be a description of a stick being snapped in half. If the reader is brought to feel the plight of the stick, well, you can imagine what that would be like.
Jesse Ball
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I have a different purpose in writing each novel. Some of them seem more similar than others, but the purposes are always different.
Jesse Ball
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That would be the death of anyone - to recognize false hopes with a certainty. One mustn't know that. If it is offered, refuse!
Jesse Ball
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One can't say how one behaved or why, really. Such situations, they are far more complex than any either/or proposition. It is simplistic to produce events in pairs and lean them against each other like cards. I suppose if you a playing go or shogi, then such a thing might be helpful, but that is not life.
Jesse Ball
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I'm an elephant today. I will need to have lots of room and also a bowl of water on the floor.
Jesse Ball
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A person always has a chance to protest this or that.
Jesse Ball
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I don't think anything needs to happen in a book.
Jesse Ball
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Not that believing such things has anything to do with whether they are true. You see that, don't you?
Jesse Ball
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I'd say writing is easier for me now than it once was, but I do less of it.
Jesse Ball
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The books turn out to be about things afterwards. I don't go into them with concepts, for the most part.
Jesse Ball
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Much of my work has been done in first person.
Jesse Ball
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I don't read books for pleasure, but in desperation.
Jesse Ball