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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.

Joshua Ferris

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Joshua Ferris
Age: 50
Born: 1974
Born: November 8
Author
Novelist
Short Story Writer
Writer
Danville
Illinois
Went
Naively
Either
Academia
Interesting
Lacking
Artist
Ended
Left
Dull
Someone
Became
Thought
Office
College

More quotes by Joshua Ferris

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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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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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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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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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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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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 have never stopped considering not becoming a writer.
Joshua Ferris
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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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A multifaceted writer, very easy on the surface to pin down but incredibly difficult once you actually read him with any depth.
Joshua Ferris
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Things could be worse and things could be so much better.
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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.
Joshua Ferris
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To conform is to lose your soul
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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.
Joshua Ferris
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I come from a very illustrious line of divorces. We love to get divorced in my family. My mother and father have been married four times each - eight ceremonies with the best of intentions.
Joshua Ferris
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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.
Joshua Ferris
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I think it's a very bad idea for someone to start writing for a readership.
Joshua Ferris
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It is really irritating to work with irritating people
Joshua Ferris
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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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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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It is forgivable to say nothing out of ignorance it's inexcusable to remain silent once awareness dawns.
Joshua Ferris