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I can't help but go against the grain, I suppose it is in my fabric to be a rule-breaker.

Victoria Chang

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Victoria Chang
Age: 54
Born: 1970
Born: January 1
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Grain
Suppose
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More quotes by Victoria Chang

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Most people are trying to go digital, and trying to do different things with poetry. McSweeney's is going in the opposite direction - going more classic, and retro, which is all coming back.
Victoria Chang
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I've read a lot more than most of the people that I know, except for one of my really close friends reads way more than I do.
Victoria Chang
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As I published books, I realized, that's not really what I want. I don't care about the books as much anymore. I just want to write poetry.
Victoria Chang
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Everyone always says that having kids is messy and sloppy. It's true, but you as a parent have to try to bring some boundaries and control over that experience, or you'd have out-of-control kids.
Victoria Chang
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Sometimes people ask me to do stuff in New York, like Can you read at this thing? And I say, Nooo, I can't just get on a plane with these two screaming children - I can't just get rid of them on such short notice and take vacation and fly over to New York.
Victoria Chang
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I am always reading, always, and tons of things at once. I wouldn't say I'm a voracious reader, though. I never finish books that fast, because I'm always reading so many things at once.
Victoria Chang
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In general, I find that poets spend a lot of time thinking about themselves, and not a lot of time thinking about other poets, or other poetry. Unless they think about how it affects them, or how it could impact them.
Victoria Chang
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I just didn't want any order in anything. I have to leave an ordered life for them - the kids - and my job. I have to be at my desk at a certain time, and I have to answer e-mails within a certain time period.
Victoria Chang
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Sometimes I feel like I'm on top of the world, and other mornings I feel like crap.
Victoria Chang
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I do think that given my background as a poet, and also I work in a different field, you're sort of neither here nor there.
Victoria Chang
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I think my brain is full of collisions and that's how I like to read and process information. I'm always comparing things and I think I do that subconsciously when I'm reading books of poetry.
Victoria Chang
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My life in general, orderly or not, it allows me more freedom in my own writing. Sometimes I wonder, though - I have friends that sit around and just write all day. And I think it's the coolest thing.
Victoria Chang
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I've always felt alone and isolated, and living on the West Coast, there's no poetry community out here, and if there is, it's really spread out - because it's LA, it's spread out.
Victoria Chang
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People who are too uptight make me nervous.
Victoria Chang
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There's an attraction to emotional clusters or hypocrisies or awkwardness. A desire to expose something or point at something that's already poking out.
Victoria Chang
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For the most part, it's a world of artists that are very in their own heads.
Victoria Chang
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Whether people like your work or not, but it's also based on a lot of other things - geography, who you happen to connect with and where they sit in that ladder - and all of that felt really isolating and disheartening to me when I figured it out.
Victoria Chang
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My gut was always that if I taught students poetry, I would give too much of myself to them and have nothing left.
Victoria Chang
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I think I've always felt very isolated, and I'm sure lots of poets do.
Victoria Chang
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I've never thought about the con of living in New York as a writer. Because I always think, Oh, what fun to be around so many writers. Because I've never been around so many writers.
Victoria Chang