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I certainly wanted to write a book that was honest about New Orleans without explaining it to death, so much so that the first draft contained references absolutely incomprehensible to anyone who hasn't lived here for several years.

Poppy Z. Brite

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Poppy Z. Brite
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: May 25
Author
Biographer
Novelist
Writer
New Orleans
Louisiana
Billy Martin
Without
Certainly
Orleans
First
Honest
Draft
Writing
Anyone
Contained
Much
Write
Explaining
Years
Death
Hasn
Wanted
Several
Firsts
Absolutely
References
Book
Lived
Incomprehensible

More quotes by Poppy Z. Brite

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I'd much rather do an obviously commercial writing project than get a day job.
Poppy Z. Brite
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Mostly I enjoy the restaurants (my husband is a chef), though I wish we had a wider diversity of ethnic food.
Poppy Z. Brite
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Ive tried to avoid labels, but they always find you.
Poppy Z. Brite
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I'm your nightmare. Did you think you were done with nightmares, now you've become one?
Poppy Z. Brite
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In high school I was the dog, always, and I never have felt comfortable or right in my body, and part of my whole exhibitionist thing has probably been a way of testing to see whether or not I really was this repulsive creature that I felt like for so long.
Poppy Z. Brite
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Delete nothing. Move nothing. Change nothing. Learn everything.
Poppy Z. Brite
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Horror is the badge of humanity, worn proudly, self-righteously, and often falsely.
Poppy Z. Brite
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My dad told me that no one could ever make it as a writer, that my chances were equivalent to winning the lottery - which was good for me, because I like to have something to prove.
Poppy Z. Brite
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The night is the hardest time to be alive and 4am knows all my secrets.
Poppy Z. Brite
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Some of the food in Liquor is food I've really eaten filtered through a veil of fiction.
Poppy Z. Brite
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They discovered that even in the face of pain that seems unbearable, even in the face of pain that wrings the last drop of blood out of your heart and leaves its scrimshaw tracery on the inside of your skull, life goes on. And pain grows dull, and begins to fade
Poppy Z. Brite
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Never relinquish your terrors. That's when they catch you.
Poppy Z. Brite
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I don't think it is possible to give tips for finding one's voice it's one of those things for which there aren't really any tricks or shortcuts, or even any advice that necessarily translates from writer to writer. All I can tell you is to write as much as possible.
Poppy Z. Brite
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There are people who must spend huge amounts of time composing these online diatribes against me, all about how disgusting and terrible I am and how no one should ever read my books, and it's not enough for them to hate me, they can't stand the fact that ANYONE likes me!
Poppy Z. Brite
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If you’re ever lucky enough to belong somewhere, if a place takes you in and you take it into yourself, you don't desert it just because it can kill you. There are things more valuable than life.
Poppy Z. Brite
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Why bother? I was right all along: the second you make yourself vulnerable to someone, they start drawing blood.
Poppy Z. Brite
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You can only maintain an immensely gothic attitude for so long before either killing yourself or beginning to feel like a poser.
Poppy Z. Brite
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If you find yourself imitating another writer, that doesn't have to be a bad thing, especially if you are a young or a new writer. However, you should be conscious of exactly how you are imitating him - word choice, sentence structure, motifs? - and think about why you're doing it.
Poppy Z. Brite
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I believe in whatever gets you throught the night. [...] Night is the hardest time to be alive. For me, anyway. It lasts so long, and four A.M.knows all my secrets.
Poppy Z. Brite
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When you have too much faith in something, it's bound to hurt you. Too much faith in anything will suck you dry. In this way, all the world is a vampire.
Poppy Z. Brite