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It's very difficult to put in the work unless you believe that what you're doing is significant in some way.

Theodora Goss

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Theodora Goss
Age: 56
Born: 1968
Born: September 30
Novelist
Writer
Buda Pest
Work
Believe
Way
Significant
Unless
Difficult

More quotes by Theodora Goss

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Nature inspires me continually. Today, I can look out my window and see the entire world covered with snow. It's like Narnia under the White Witch.
Theodora Goss
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Now that The Thorn and the Blossom has come out and I'm done with my doctoral degree (yes, I'm finally Dr. Goss), I'm turning to longer projects.
Theodora Goss
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That sort of effort has to come not only from the writer but also from a really innovative publisher like Quirk.
Theodora Goss
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It's appropriate to have magic in a love story, because magic is a sort of metaphor for what love feels like? When we fall in love, the world feels magical to us. It becomes an enchanted place.
Theodora Goss
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If you look at the natural world, really look at it, it's always magical.
Theodora Goss
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Jorge Luis Borges wrote a poem when he was in his 80s about one day writing the book that would justify him. This was long after he had become one of the great masters, a writer everyone looks up to and reveres. As artists, I don't think we ever see ourselves as done. We always think we're at the beginning . . .
Theodora Goss
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I would tell myself to get more sleep! Believe it or not, I wrote the book while finishing my PhD in English literature. It was wonderful to get away from doing literary scholarship by writing this mythical love story. I think so much of my own love for books and scholarship comes through in The Thorn and the Blossom.
Theodora Goss
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I'm writinng my first full-length novel, which is based on a novella I wrote called The Mad Scientist's Daughter. I'm having a wonderful time with it, but of course it's presenting challenges as well. Stories always do, no matter what they are.
Theodora Goss
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Delia Sherman once told me that you never learn to write a story. You only learn to write the story you are currently writing. You have to learn how to write the next story all over again. And she's absolutely right.
Theodora Goss
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The book itself [The Thorn and The Blossom] is bound accordion-style: it has no spine, so it can open in either direction, and it's in a slipcase.
Theodora Goss
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I worry very much that people won't like it, or will think it's simply silly. But I have a post-it note above my desk that says What would you do if you weren't afraid? And if I weren't afraid, I would do a poetry collection.
Theodora Goss
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I put that part of myself into both Brendan and Evelyn [from The Thorn and the Blossom] - as well as some of my own anxieties about the academic life!
Theodora Goss
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I had a short story collection come out in 2006, and then I couldn't work on large projects for a long time because I was finishing my doctoral degree.
Theodora Goss
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I co-edited an anthology called Interfictions with Delia Sherman and wrote a short scholarly book on three women poets called Voices from Fairyland: The Fantastical Poems of Mary Coleridge, Charlotte Mew, and Sylvia Townsend Warner. So I've been busy, but I haven't had time to write a novel.
Theodora Goss
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The appeal of writing a romance was that I'd never written one before the The Thorn and The Blossom.
Theodora Goss
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The book[ The Thorn and The Blossom] is a love story about two people, Brendan and Evelyn, who meet in a small town in Cornwall where Evelyn has gone on vacation and Brendan is working in his father's bookstore. The story is told from both perspectives, Brendan's and Evelyn's.
Theodora Goss
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Believe in the importance of your art.
Theodora Goss
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Sometimes you have to follow your uncommon sense.
Theodora Goss
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Accept criticism. If you do not offer your work for criticism and accept that criticism, meaning give it serious thought and attention, then you will never improve.
Theodora Goss
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I think part of my purpose in this life is to talk about magic, and to make it.
Theodora Goss