Quote

Thoughts are slippery fish in a cold shallow stream.If you are intent on capturing a worthwhile one, you need to stand very still, focus very hard on somewhere outside yourself, and then simply ignore it until it gets so close that it tickles your ankles.Then, pounce.

Vera Nazarian

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Vera Nazarian
Age: 58
Born: 1966
Born: May 25
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Moscow
Russian SFSR
Still
Outside
Shallow
Need
Thoughts
Worthwhile
Tickles
Hard
Gets
Ignore
Pounce
Needs
Cold
Streams
Capturing
Simply
Fish
Ankles
Stand
Fishes
Slippery
Focus
Somewhere
Intent
Stills
Close
Stream

More quotes by Vera Nazarian

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I've always been creative verbally, had a flair, my teachers said - wrote great expository essays in elementary school, scribbled little poems, embraced all writing assignments. And all along I read voraciously - first in Russian and then, after we left the USSR, in English, and even Spanish.
Vera Nazarian
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Don't be afraid of the dark. Shine!
Vera Nazarian
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I technically live in the desert - Los Angeles being an artificial oasis - but my interest stems even farther to my own ethnic roots and to my love of antiquity, of the Old World and of the east.
Vera Nazarian
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Consolation has been wrongly reviled. Consolation is not apathy or inaction. It is not closing one's eyes to the evils of the world. Rather, consolation is the first step in regaining personal equilibrium and strength, which necessarily precedes the ability to act.
Vera Nazarian
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Who says you cannot hold the moon in your hand? Tonight when the stars come out and the moon rises in the velvet sky, look outside your window, then raise your hand and position your fingers around the disk of light. There you go . . . That was easy!
Vera Nazarian
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At some point, sitting in the school library, during reading period, I looked up from my leopard print hardcover composition notebook where I was scribbling a derivative [John Ronald Reuel ] Tolkien epic full of purple prose in tiny handwriting and thought to myself, Damn! I am a writer! How did that happen?.
Vera Nazarian
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Some writers whom I respect very much, like China Miéville and some others of the New Weird, consider the true role of fantasy to be not Tolkienesque consolation but subversion - a kind of rebe Ûllion from complacency. Yes, I can see what is meant here. And I also see the need to change, to fix, to drastically improve the human lot.
Vera Nazarian
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In some of my works I take away other elements of the world - normalcy, sex drive, sense of time, memory, a loved one. Without some of these basics, characters have no choice but to do something to reclaim their lives.
Vera Nazarian
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No waving of enchanted wands but heightened perception. No magic objects, but a transformed and enhanced reality. No spells or chants, but the raw power of the human will to enact supernatural change upon the universal fabric. This is the kind of magic that fills Lords of Rainbow - elemental, organic, humanistic - an extension of reality.
Vera Nazarian
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Dangling a carrot in front of a donkey—or anyone else for that matter—is not nice, and not fair, unless you eventually plan to give it up to them.
Vera Nazarian
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One sin seldom mentioned is that of killing time.
Vera Nazarian
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Neither sugar nor salt tastes particularly good by itself. Each is at its best when used to season other things. Love is the same way. Use it to season people.
Vera Nazarian
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I was nurtured on Greek Mythology and the classical epics. I lived and breathed Homer. Other mythologies - the Russian, the Norse, the Persian, the Indian, Egyptian, etc. - all came later. First and foremost were the Greeks, and they were all living in my head as though I were Zeus and they were a clamoring Chorus of Athenas.
Vera Nazarian
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Even for the people who are color-blind to any degree, I believe their experience would also be affected [ in Lords of Rainbow ] if everyone else too only perceived the world in colorless monochrome.
Vera Nazarian
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True balm [of fantasy] takes away the painful irritation of life and simply heals, allowing one to begin anew. And that is what fantasy can do for us.
Vera Nazarian
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There's a difference between playing and playing games. The former is an act of joy, the latter — an act.
Vera Nazarian
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Most of us have nicknames-annoying, endearing, embarrassing.But what about your true name?It is not necessarily your given name. But it is the one to which you are most eager to respond when called.Ever wonder why?Your true name has the secret power to call you.
Vera Nazarian
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Don't let a loud few determine the nature of the sound. It makes for poor harmony and diminishes the song.
Vera Nazarian
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Thus, true long-term change is brought about not by destructive passion of the moment but by well-reasoned constructive action. Violent shock of Armageddon that leaves nothing in its wake but a blank slate is not a solution, only a postponement of progress.
Vera Nazarian
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Instructions are never included. They vary with the strength of your ability to see, the measure of your selective blindness, the limits of your mercy, and the intensity of your desire.
Vera Nazarian