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Marion Zimmer Bradley took apart my first submission to her, covered the manuscript in red ink revisions, and told me to try her again. I had never been so reeling with authorial joy as I had been that day, holding Marion's letter and seeing that ravaged manuscript - finally, it meant that someone cared!

Vera Nazarian

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Vera Nazarian
Age: 58
Born: 1966
Born: May 25
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Moscow
Russian SFSR
Trying
Meant
Submission
Reeling
Never
Took
Letter
Revisions
Joy
Covered
Ravaged
Told
Holding
Manuscript
Seeing
Red
Manuscripts
Someone
Apart
Revision
Firsts
Letters
Ink
Authorial
First
Finally
Cared
Marion

More quotes by Vera Nazarian

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Here's a new 'Blessing' for our time -- 'May Anderson Cooper never be sent to report on your town!
Vera Nazarian
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When I was a little kid back in Moscow, Russia, I've always thought I would become an artist or a folk dancer or an astronomer. In fact, if you'd asked me then about a life of solitary writing I would have said, Oh how boring! Imagine, to sit at a desk all day and just write.
Vera Nazarian
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Sometimes, being true to yourself means changing your mind. Self changes, and you follow.
Vera Nazarian
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My brand of fantasy is completely devoid of the traditional notions of magic as ritual. Instead I see the fantastic as a meta-layer of existence beyond the real world.
Vera Nazarian
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For as long as there's anyone to ask 'Why?' the answer will always be, 'Why not?
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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Was it you or I who stumbled first? It does not matter. The one of us who finds the strength to get up first, must help the other.
Vera Nazarian
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We don't need fantasy to mess with our minds to the point of rendering us insane - real life horrors do that already.
Vera Nazarian
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In Lords of Rainbow I start out by taking away color from the world, and in the process show color's vital place in our lives. At least I hope that by the end of the book it's a portion of what the reader comes away with - a sense of how much color perception enriches our lives and how its lack can make our sensory experience incomplete.
Vera Nazarian
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Creativity is not so much a boundless well, but an all-you-can-eat buffet of elements for your creative endeavor. Eventually you've eaten your fill, and it's time to digest and then make something. But at some point, it will be time to return to the restaurant.
Vera Nazarian
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The only thing faster than the speed of thought is the speed of forgetfulness. Good thing we have other people to help us remember.
Vera Nazarian
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The only way to help your unique literary voice grow and eventually sing like a glorious creature of wonder is to write what you excites you into a creative passion and brings you pure unadulterated joy.
Vera Nazarian
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My characters often start out with a loss of some sort, usually a loss of emotion or purpose or hope. What I do in the course of my writing is weave a thematic arc of fulfillment. It is my constant theme as a creator.
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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A boomerang returns back to the person who throws it.
Vera Nazarian
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Because without such a reprieve we cannot pause and regroup and with the newfound strength go on to initiate that very change which is sorely needed by all.
Vera Nazarian
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What we need in fantasy is the sudden balm of clarity - a temporary reprieve from life's white noise and clamor of pain, a kind of time-out. Such clarity, a new perspective, is made possible by fantastic metaphor.
Vera Nazarian
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A made-up proverb from Dreams of the Compass Rose says, In the desert, the only god is a well. I love exploring the intensity of such juxtaposition, the dangerous edge.
Vera Nazarian
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I love to fool my readers, but in a good way. If you've read any of my work, there's a good chance that at some point I surprised you.
Vera Nazarian
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Frost grows on the window glass, forming whorl patterns of lovely translucent geometry. Breathe on the glass, and you give frost more ammunition. Now it can build castles and cities and whole ice continents with your breath’s vapor. In a few blinks you can almost see the winter fairies moving in . . . But first, you hear the crackle of their wings.
Vera Nazarian