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I like to be surprised. The best writing is when it defies me, when it starts going a different way than I had planned.

Wally Lamb

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Wally Lamb
Age: 74
Born: 1950
Born: October 17
Author
Novelist
Writer
Norwich
Connecticut
Surprised
Starts
Best
Different
Writing
Going
Way
Defies
Like
Planned

More quotes by Wally Lamb

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Eastern Connecticut is very different from Western we're more liverwurst than pâté, more bowling than polo.
Wally Lamb
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Love stories are probably all Ive ever been able to write or want to write.
Wally Lamb
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Look, don't just stare at the pages, I used to tell my students. Become the characters. Live inside the book.
Wally Lamb
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The point is this: that the stream of memory may lead you to the river of understanding. And understanding, in turn, may be a tributary to the river of forgiveness.
Wally Lamb
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Power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed.
Wally Lamb
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Getting a job scared her but she was determined not to shy away from risk. That's what life's all about. Climbing out onto the airplane wing and jumping off.
Wally Lamb
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Human behavior in the midst of hardship caught my attention very early on, and my first stories were all pictures, no words.
Wally Lamb
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Love is like breathing, you take it in and let it out.
Wally Lamb
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So many bad things have happened to them that they can't trust the good things. They have to shove them away before someone can get it back.
Wally Lamb
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I like to write first-person because I like to become the character I'm writing.
Wally Lamb
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If you want your prayers answered, get up off your knees and do something about them.
Wally Lamb
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I try to find something that applies not to me only, but to others, but don't try to control it too much. Essentially it is about what moves us, teaches us about ourselves.
Wally Lamb
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Religion's just a well-oiled profit-driven denial of the randomness of it all.
Wally Lamb
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The seeker embarks on a journey to find what he wants and discovers, along the way, what he needs.
Wally Lamb
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I try to stick with what moves me or teaches me about myself, same thing I hope the novels do for others.
Wally Lamb
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Let me tell you something, my wife died for Tuesdays ago. Cancer of the colon. We were married forty-one years. Now you stop feeling sorry for yourself and lose some of that pork of yours. Pretty girl like you - you don't want to do this yourself.
Wally Lamb
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Love comes in far more shapes and sizes than what the family-values crowd condones, of course.
Wally Lamb
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People waste their happiness - that's what makes me sad. Everyone's so scared to be happy.
Wally Lamb
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However far fiction writers stray from their own lives and experiences - and I stray pretty far from mine - I think, ultimately, that we may be writing what we need to write in some way, albeit unconsciously.
Wally Lamb
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All the dead bolts, pulled shades and hidden knives in the world couldn't protect you from the truth.
Wally Lamb