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In a practical sense, pain kept me from sitting down as much, so that sometimes I would have to stand to write. Not that I would necessarily have gotten anywhere anyway. But it definitely set me back to be in so much pain.

Lynne Tillman

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Lynne Tillman
Age: 77
Born: 1947
Born: January 1
Novelist
Writer
Much
Sitting
Practicals
Would
Stand
Practical
Pain
Gotten
Write
Anyway
Sense
Anywhere
Back
Necessarily
Sometimes
Kept
Writing
Definitely

More quotes by Lynne Tillman

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I don't think anybody says to Coetzee or Dostoyevsky or Kafka, Your characters aren't likeable. It's not about your character winning a popularity contest. That's not the writer's job.
Lynne Tillman
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Whatever the style is, I want to have a sense that the writer is thinking, and really trying to get at something, and that there's a sense of discovery as the writing goes along.
Lynne Tillman
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I still do believe that form and content are very much related. I think throwing away some of the rule books on that is a good thing.
Lynne Tillman
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The Dutch and the English, former competitors for world dominance, taught me the wisdom of waiting as well as withholding.
Lynne Tillman
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Now that I am conscious of the world of chronic pain, when I see somebody walking down the street who's having trouble, I feel a sadness for them. I notice.
Lynne Tillman
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I don't have the education of an art historian. I've certainly read about art and look at art and have educated myself to some extent. But I'm not a skilled or thorough art historian and I wouldn't call myself an art critic.
Lynne Tillman
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Desire is a word I'm tired of. I've been living with that word for years. Yes, of course, we're all desiring machines. I have sometimes wondered what people would want, if there were no advertising. And death, what other subject is there? It's the subject. It's our subject. It's the great human dilemma, that we die and know we will.
Lynne Tillman
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Kafka wrote the great line: my education has damaged me in ways I do not even know. And that's always been a signature motto for me.
Lynne Tillman
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I think the slowness of exchange is over, and the idea of waiting for a response - that's gone. People don't want to wait. It's all this instantaneity. That's fine. But it also makes writing different, if you're writing for an instant exchange compared with being able to have time for more reflection.
Lynne Tillman
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[Reality] isn't simply the so-called world that you're in. Your reality is a much larger one that takes in all matter of identification and desires and hopes.
Lynne Tillman
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People are less focused on the story, and more on how the story is told.
Lynne Tillman
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There are lots of unlikable characters in literature. It doesn't mean they're not fascinating.
Lynne Tillman
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I think many writers really believe that being published is a traumatic experience.
Lynne Tillman
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I'd studied English literature and American history, but the English literature, which I thought was going to be helpful to me in an immediate way, was the opposite. So I had to un-think a lot of things and move out of my own head, and I learned a lot. It was like graduate school, but an un-graduate school or an un-school.
Lynne Tillman
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My friends and I sometimes laugh at each other that there is so much maintenance of a body. I paid no attention when I was younger.
Lynne Tillman
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That's why our comics are important: they're pointing things out and laughing at the same time. There have been horrible, horrible times in history. They're mostly horrible times. But not to laugh? Not to find humor in something like dark optimism/bright pessimism - I think that's sad, frankly.
Lynne Tillman
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I'm not interested in safety. A great risk in writing is imagining you have something to protect. Playing it safe to placate someone or something. People talk about compromise, but often people don't even know when they're compromising, because they're not conscious of contradictions.
Lynne Tillman
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A friend of mine, a poet, Rebecca Wolff recently said to me, You know, your stories are really voice-driven, and I guess I knew that already, but it's so true that I can't get something going unless I can hear the voice.
Lynne Tillman
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I think it's true that unless human beings experience something, they simply don't understand what people are going through.
Lynne Tillman
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I think it's very hard to reconcile oneself to the notion that it may not matter what you think if you still want to write.
Lynne Tillman