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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
Starts
Best
Different
Writing
Going
Way
Defies
Like
Planned
Surprised

More quotes by Wally Lamb

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When I was a kid, I was surrounded by girls: older sisters, older girl cousins just down the street... except for an older boy named Vito who threw rocks. Each year I would wish for a baby brother. It never happened.
Wally Lamb
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First I laughed my way through Elinor Lipman's book of political tweets. Then I put my ear to the ground and listened to Molly Ivins guffawing from the grave. Lipman is a piquant poetic rock star!
Wally Lamb
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I thought about how love was always the thing that did that - smashed into you, left you raw. The deeper you loved, the deeper it hurt.
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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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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But I think this: that whatever prices I've paid, whatever sorrows I shoulder, well, I have blessings, too. Not just my family now, but the others-the ones who have died...They're with me still. They're here...
Wally Lamb
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I love revising. If you demystify the process, it comes down to four strategies: what can I do to make the draft better what should I cut out to make it stronger what do I need to do to clarify it and finally, what should I reposition.
Wally Lamb
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The roundness of life's design may be a sign that there is a presence beyond ourselves.
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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Love stories are probably all Ive ever been able to write or want to write.
Wally Lamb
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I think I write fiction for the opportunity to get beyond the limits of my own life.
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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Power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed.
Wally Lamb
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I write to find out what the story means to me, that is what I try to do especially with the first draft.
Wally Lamb
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I usually learn more from the situations I hate than the ones I love.
Wally Lamb
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But what are our stories if not the mirrors we hold up to our fears?
Wally Lamb
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I cried because I had no shoes. Then I met a man who had no feet.
Wally Lamb
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Love grows from the rich foam of forgiveness, mongrels make good dogs, and the evidence of God exists in the roundness of things.
Wally Lamb
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I'm a very rooted person. I grew up in Norwich, Connecticut, I still live in Connecticut.
Wally Lamb
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Hardest thing: creating something out of nothing - the first draft is torturous.
Wally Lamb