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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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Joshua Ferris
Age: 49
Born: 1974
Born: November 8
Author
Novelist
Short Story Writer
Writer
Danville
Illinois
Unwashed
Accessible
Commercial
Fiction
Serious
Funny
Business
Great

More quotes by 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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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.
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.
Joshua Ferris
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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.
Joshua Ferris
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Without work, so much of one's identity just evaporates.
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.
Joshua Ferris
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We had the great good fortune and shortcomings of character that marked every generation that had never seen war.
Joshua Ferris
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It is really irritating to work with irritating people
Joshua Ferris
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To conform is to lose your soul
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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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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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.
Joshua Ferris
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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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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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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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Things could be worse and things could be so much better.
Joshua Ferris
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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.
Joshua Ferris
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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.
Joshua Ferris
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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.
Joshua Ferris
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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.
Joshua Ferris