Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Lynne Tillman
Age: 77
Born: 1947
Born: January 1
Novelist
Writer
Humor
Pointing
Time
Dark
Comics
Think
Times
Optimism
Thinking
History
Mostly
Like
Find
Bright
Important
Horrible
Something
Laugh
Pessimism
Laughing
Frankly
Things

More quotes by Lynne Tillman

Image
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
Image
As a reader myself, which precedes my being a writer, of course, I read in order to enter another world.
Lynne Tillman
Image
Now that I'm an older woman, I'm so much more aware of the changes - almost too aware. I feel sorry for being so dismissive. You have to think about what you're thinking about and realize that you're thinking it.
Lynne Tillman
Image
I think the major device for me is that narrator's voice. I'm always trying to find a different kind of form to tell whatever story it is, and I wish that weren't so, because it drives me crazy.
Lynne Tillman
Image
Certainly there will always be stories.
Lynne Tillman
Image
When something in a sequence is edited, if you repeat an image, but in a different place, the effect is different. Because the brain is remembering, and the different juxtaposition triggers other memories, thoughts, ideas, and so on.
Lynne Tillman
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Any writer knows that what's left out is as essential, if not more so, than what's there. Unlearning works that way.
Lynne Tillman
Image
Obviously the Internet makes everything easier - you get people's addresses and so on and everything seems much more accessible.
Lynne Tillman
Image
I think many writers really believe that being published is a traumatic experience.
Lynne Tillman
Image
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
Image
The Dutch and the English, former competitors for world dominance, taught me the wisdom of waiting as well as withholding.
Lynne Tillman
Image
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
Image
In depression, you're flattened. Your energy level is gone. When I'm anxious, I tend to have more energy. But it depends on the nature of the anxiety. The anxiety to finish something would seem to be more productive than the anxiety that says, You're feeling sick.
Lynne Tillman
Image
Conversation on the page should reflect what the story is about. It doesn't have to be realistic in the sense that it's something you heard and plugged into a story.
Lynne Tillman
Image
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
Image
It's easy, at this point in my life, very easy to write a beautiful sentence that's meaningless. A lot of writers do that. But I don't want it to be meaningless. I want it to actually say what I want it to say, and so I'm thinking about it again and again and again.
Lynne Tillman
Image
I subject my sentences and the words to a kind of Grand Inquisition.
Lynne Tillman
Image
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