Quote

I eat broccoli. I think about the plot. I pace in circles for hours, counter-clockwise, listening to music. I try to think of one detail in the scene I'm about to write that I'm really excited about writing. Until I can come up with that one detail, I pace.

Matthew Tobin Anderson

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Matthew Tobin Anderson
Age: 56
Born: 1968
Born: November 4
Novelist
Writer
Cambridge
Massachusetts
M.T. Anderson
Writing
Details
Trying
Excited
Really
Scene
Broccoli
Think
Listening
Counter
Thinking
Hours
Detail
Write
Pace
Music
Plot
Come
Circles

More quotes by Matthew Tobin Anderson

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I can't tell you how irritating it is to be an atheist in a haunted house.
Matthew Tobin Anderson
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Teens are not like the weird, dumb dwarves you have around your house. They are actually you when you were younger.
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I am messaging you to say that I love you, and that you're completely wrong about me thinking you're stupid. I always thought you could teach me things. I was always waiting. You're not like the others. You say things that no one expects you to. You think you're stupid. You want to be stupid. But you're someone people could learn from.
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There is a power in names. Olakunde told us of ashe-the power which runs through all things, subtle and flexible, which find its most potent expression in human utterance so that it is a terrible thing to call down imprecations on an enemy, or to wish for anything but good, for what is said out loud is forged into truth.
Matthew Tobin Anderson
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I feel like it's important every once in a while to estrange ourselves from the familiar to remind ourselves of the potentialities of people, how many different ways there are of being.
Matthew Tobin Anderson
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You made her apologize for sickness. For her courage. You made her feel sorry for dying.
Matthew Tobin Anderson
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I don't know when they first had feeds. Like maybe, fifty or a hundred years ago. Before that, they had to use their hands and their eyes. Computers were all outside the body. They carried them around outside of them, in their hands, like if you carried your lungs in a briefcase and opened it to breathe.
Matthew Tobin Anderson
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At long last, you may no longer distinguish what binds you from what is you.
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And I realize that the decision to be human is not one single instant, but is a thousand choices made very day. It is choices we make every second and requires constant vigilance. We have to fight to remain human.
Matthew Tobin Anderson
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Certain elements of teen life that, 10 years ago, were very important to me still, are becoming less so as I get older. I mean, Ive kinda gotten over, I guess Im saying, the fact that I had trouble getting a date for the prom.
Matthew Tobin Anderson
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It’s the end. It’s the end of the civilization. We’re going down. No, it’s sure not too attractive. Lenticels. I just hope my kids don’t live to see the last days. The things burning and people living in cellars. Violet. The only thing worse than the thought it may all come tumbling down is the thought that we may go on like this forever.
Matthew Tobin Anderson
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Older teens tend to write to me and say, 'Thank you for not writing down to teenagers.'
Matthew Tobin Anderson
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A lot of the drive to make narratives came from having to play by myself as a 5- or 6-year-old in the woods.
Matthew Tobin Anderson
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Its a very 18th-century thing to have a book broken into several volumes.
Matthew Tobin Anderson
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We are the nation of dreams. We are seers. We are wizards. We speak in visions. Our letters are like flocks of doves, released from under our hats. We have only to stretch out our hand and desire, and what we wish for settles like a kerchief in our palm. We are a race of sorcerers, enchanters. We are Atlantis. We are the wizard-isle of Mu.
Matthew Tobin Anderson
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it's like a squid in love with the sky.
Matthew Tobin Anderson
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I write for teens partially to work out whatever it was that I needed to from my own teenage years.
Matthew Tobin Anderson
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I feel like it's hard to get into historical novels where you know what the story is far too well.
Matthew Tobin Anderson
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There are times when friendship feels like running down a hill together as fast as you can, jumping over things, spinning around, and you don't care where you're going, and you don't care where you've come from, because all that matters is speed, and the hands holding your hands.
Matthew Tobin Anderson
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Whispering makes a narrow place narrower.
Matthew Tobin Anderson