Quote

You think I alienate myself from society? Of course I alienate myself from society. It’s the only way I know of not being constantly reminded of all the ways I’m alienated from society.

Joshua Ferris

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Joshua Ferris
Age: 49
Born: 1974
Born: November 8
Author
Novelist
Short Story Writer
Writer
Danville
Illinois
Think
Alienated
Thinking
Reminded
Constantly
Ways
Courses
Course
Society
Way
Alienate

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Without work, so much of one's identity just evaporates.
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It is really irritating to work with irritating people
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I have never stopped considering not becoming a writer.
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I don't write directly on to the computer because I don't think well facing forward with fingers on a keyboard. I think better looking down holding a pen. And the concentration quotient of pen and paper is higher than when I'm moving words around on screen.
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I've always thought things were absurd. It would take a lot more effort for me to see things as reasonable.
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We had the great good fortune and shortcomings of character that marked every generation that had never seen war.
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To conform is to lose your soul
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One thing that I discovered about myself is I really don't like traveling. I feel like it's a terrible personal failing, but I was so satisfied to arrive at the conclusion.
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I wake up every day in order to do something that's quixotic, and not necessarily called for in the world, but I do it because there's extraordinary meaning for me behind the effort.
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The office is a romantic enabler because you're always around the person you have a crush on. There's no escape from, and maybe no desire to escape from, those pressure-cooker conditions. And there's an automatic series of things you have to talk about all the time.
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A multifaceted writer, very easy on the surface to pin down but incredibly difficult once you actually read him with any depth.
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Between the time I first started working in advertising in 1998 and now, the word brand has replaced identity. We are no longer individuals so much as we are brands. We're individual brands. Individuals are basically left to define their individuality by staying off the internet, which in and of itself can be a brand, the opting-out brand.
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I believe people think as a group more often than we might realize or care to admit. We like to believe that we act as individuals and nothing more, but time and again - in corporations and business, in politics and religion, in fashion and culture, and in friendships and social circles - we think and do as one.
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Every time you hear someone read your book and liked your book, you're never sure whether that's going to follow with a similar remark from someone else. Perhaps I have low expectations, but whenever I hear someone say, 'I liked your book,' I don't know if it's going to happen again.
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I think it's a very bad idea for someone to start writing for a readership.
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Sometimes you have to make decisions that necessarily exclude the collective. It's more difficult to be a friend - even though they know each other and they treat each other like friends, it's more of a challenge for them. It's just institutional fact the two characters that are the most aloof are the ones who have the most responsibility.
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We were fractious and overpaid. Our mornings lacked promise. At least those of us who smoked had something to look forward to at ten-fifteen.
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A dentist is only half the doctor he claims to be.
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Things could be worse and things could be so much better.
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If you can get by with quotes from The Godfather and nothing you say matters, that's pretty bleak, don't you think? Don't we want what we say to matter?
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