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Your mind burns a lot of calories. Writing can feel like a physical workout.
Philipp Meyer -
I didn't fit the typical profile of a trader. I was an English major working on a novel at night. Most everyone else was a maths or economics major; most everyone else had relatives or family in banking.
Philipp Meyer
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When we think of the myth of the settling of the West, this is our creation myth. But because we think of it as mythology, not as real people interacting with other real people, we ignore the cost of human lives and blood.
Philipp Meyer -
When I finish a book, I get extremely restless; I have to aggressively find ways to occupy myself; going off into the woods alone, doing things that are physically or mentally demanding to keep myself busy until the next big idea comes.
Philipp Meyer -
There's parts of me I don't understand, he said, and shrugged.
Philipp Meyer -
Each time a high-wage job is lost, a family is turned upside down. And that affects the communities where they live.
Philipp Meyer -
My first published novel, 'American Rust,' took three and a half years of full-time work to write. But I wrote two apprentice novels before that.
Philipp Meyer -
I was a bit of a delinquent growing up, a very poor student - I nearly failed several grades before dropping out of high school and getting a G.E.D. But I still read a lot. Thrillers and war novels, mostly, along with the occasional literary novel from my parents' bookshelf.
Philipp Meyer
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Since I quit banking, all my major life decisions, when they could, have revolved around writing.
Philipp Meyer -
When you hold things back, when you don't commit completely to your ideas and trust completely in your own instincts, you are guaranteeing your own failure - even if you end up having commercial success.
Philipp Meyer -
I wanted to think about our creation myth; you know, what is the fundamental story that defines America. And it certainly is the West.
Philipp Meyer -
I don't think you can be taught how to make art. You can be coached, but on a fundamental level you have to figure it out for yourself. You have to learn how your own mind works, figure out your own relationship to the art; you essentially have to invent it completely for yourself.
Philipp Meyer -
I couldn't understand what was important about school. Dropping out was the first adult decision I made. If I ever have kids, I would hate for them to drop out. But I wasn't a rebel. I never cared to be against school. I just wanted to do what I wanted to do.
Philipp Meyer -
What would I tell her? That I have always known I belonged here? That one day some action will be required that will prove my life's value? A forty-six-year-old man, waiting for fate to take over... it likely already has. (p. 269)
Philipp Meyer
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If you've grown up with guns, the thought that someone might take them away makes your stomach churn. They make you feel safe. If you didn't grow up with guns, if you don't know how to use them, then the thought that someone else has them makes your stomach churn.
Philipp Meyer -
After I finished college, I got a job on Wall Street as a derivatives trader, but after a couple years of it, I was calling in sick in order to work on my novel.
Philipp Meyer -
To be a simple animal like my father, untroubled by consciousness, or conscience. To sleep soundly, at east with your certainties, men as expendable as beef. (p. 161)
Philipp Meyer -
Texas was mostly short-grass and tall-grass prairie when modern Europeans arrived here. It really was a land of milk and honey. But when they brought all these cattle onto these relatively small bits of land, and the cattle were allowed to graze freely, they essentially destroyed the prairie.
Philipp Meyer -
We moved to Baltimore, Maryland, in 1979, when I was five. The funny thing is that, even though Baltimore had one of the top murder rates in the country in those days, I grew up hearing about how dangerous New York was.
Philipp Meyer -
My parents have always been incredibly supportive. Even when I dropped out of high school, they said, 'We trust you, we believe in you.'
Philipp Meyer
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When I dropped out of high school at age 16, I didn't know I was going to become a writer - I just knew I'd never been happy in school, and I had this strong suspicion I'd be happy doing other things.
Philipp Meyer -
You have to save yourself before you can save anyone else.
Philipp Meyer -
I'd grown up in a working class neighborhood in Baltimore, a place hard hit by the offshoring of numerous heavy industries - steel, textile, shipbuilding.
Philipp Meyer -
Mental note if you make it to forty remember on how all those fucks treated her. Stop being an asshole while you're still young.
Philipp Meyer