Quote

Everyone desires relationships and community. Most people want to belong to a cohesive, like-minded group. It staves off loneliness. It promotes identity. These are natural and very human instincts.

Joshua Ferris

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Joshua Ferris
Age: 49
Born: 1974
Born: November 8
Author
Novelist
Short Story Writer
Writer
Danville
Illinois
Desire
Instinct
Staves
Human
Relationships
Cohesive
Group
Promotes
Humans
Identity
Instincts
Like
Groups
Minded
People
Community
Belong
Natural
Desires
Everyone
Loneliness

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My first job is to write a book that I believe is compelling and deserves the long sustained attention that any novel requires, and to worry about the commerce only late in the game.
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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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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.
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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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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 have never stopped considering not becoming a writer.
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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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After I left college I thought, very naively, that either you became someone interesting - an artist - or you went into academia. If you ended up in an office you were dull and lacking. And I ended up in an office.
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Being serious is serious business in fiction. It's commercial or hoi polloi in fiction to be funny. It's too accessible to the great unwashed.
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It is forgivable to say nothing out of ignorance it's inexcusable to remain silent once awareness dawns.
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If someone were plucked from the group and given those responsibilities, they might find themselves growing more aloof, just by virtue of that promotion. Suddenly the group culture excludes you. I saw this in my own working life, and I don't think it's a coincidence - I sensed a kind of loneliness in middle managers especially.
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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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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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A dentist is only half the doctor he claims to be.
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It is really irritating to work with irritating people
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Humor is a very big part of life, and if you exclude humor from your book, you're not capturing a very important part of human experience.
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Without work, so much of one's identity just evaporates.
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To conform is to lose your soul
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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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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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