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We do seem, as a culture, to fetishize the sweep. But I know there's room for big short, fierce novels, and big solid ones.

Meg Wolitzer

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Meg Wolitzer
Age: 65
Born: 1959
Born: May 28
Novelist
University Teacher
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Seems
Short
Room
Ones
Seem
Fetishize
Novel
Sweep
Rooms
Fierce
Bigs
Solid
Culture
Novels

More quotes by Meg Wolitzer

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While it's true that some writers, when taking on love and war, find the task too big, or only succeed in one but not the other, Mengestu tracks both themes with authority and feeling.
Meg Wolitzer
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Books light the fire-whether it's a book that's already written, or an empty journal that needs to be filled in.
Meg Wolitzer
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The generation that had information, but no context. Butter, but no bread. Craving, but no longing.
Meg Wolitzer
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Everybody has a theme. You talk to somebody awhile, and you realize they have one particular thing that rules them. The best you can do is a variation on the theme, but that's about it.
Meg Wolitzer
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To be anorexic...she thought, amounted to wanting to shed yourself of some of the imperfect mosaic of pieces that made you who you were. She could understand that now for, maybe underneath that desquamated self you would locate a new version.
Meg Wolitzer
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But now the world, he thought, had taken them. He knew that this could suddenly happen. One day you just woke up, and there was somewhere that you needed to be.
Meg Wolitzer
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I always thought it was the saddest and most devastating ending. How you could have these enormous dreams that never get met. How without knowing it you could just make yourself smaller over time. I don't want that to happen to me.
Meg Wolitzer
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We sometimes drive ourselves crazy with how our books will be seen, when in fact we already know what they're about, and where our obsessions are. If we can spin those obsessions into fiction, then there's a decent chance they will be fiction-worthy, as you call it. The idea of the sweep of ideas is a complicated one.
Meg Wolitzer
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Both my mother and I have close groups of friends that include other writers, and these friendships are very important to us.
Meg Wolitzer
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People like to warn you that by the time you reach the middle of your life, passion will begin to feel like a meal eaten long ago, which you remember with great tenderness.
Meg Wolitzer
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I've been waiting for someone to sign the permission slip for me to write about sex. In the meantime, I've written about sex in all my books anyway.
Meg Wolitzer
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When I wrote The Interestings, I wanted to let time unspool, to give the book the feeling of time passing. I had to allow myself the freedom to move back and forth in time freely, and to trust that readers would accept this.
Meg Wolitzer
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It seemed that everywhere you went, people quickly adapted to the way they had to live, and called it Life.
Meg Wolitzer
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People could not get enough of what they had lost, even if they no longer wanted it.
Meg Wolitzer
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Just the act of sleeping beside someone you liked to be with. Maybe that was love.
Meg Wolitzer
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But it had no doubt sprung from true emotion, for all that parents ever wanted, really, was for you to love their child the way they did.
Meg Wolitzer
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You had only one chance for a signature in life, but most people left no impression.
Meg Wolitzer
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After a certain age, you felt a need not to be alone. It grew stronger, like a radio frequency, until finally it was so powerful that you were forced to do something about it.
Meg Wolitzer
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I have never been much of a researcher
Meg Wolitzer
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In The Interestings I wanted to write about what happens to talent over time. In some people talent blooms, in others it falls away.
Meg Wolitzer