Victor LaValle Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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The more I go on in this career of making albums, writing songs and playing music, the more I think of each album as a movie. I really wanted to make a film, but making a film is much more expensive than making a record.
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When you first hear Mozart's music, your first impression is that it's very alive, but if you peel away the layers, you can hear sorrow and sadness behind it, and that's what I try to be: multi-layered.
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I just enjoy being onstage and relating to the audience.
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Conscientious objection is an intrinsic part of being a soldier.
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I taught English and history, so my education for that really helped prepare me for writing historical fiction.
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I was baptized a Baptist, but I'm just Christian, as far as I'm concerned. I could go in any church, doesn't matter if it's Baptist, Protestant, Episcopal, or Catholic.
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Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.
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I try to have a normal life since I have an abnormal job.
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It's such a Bore Being always Poor.
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My own writing has perhaps more of an American flavor than a British one, but that's because the stories I've so far written have needed it. 'Empire State,' 'Seven Wonders' and 'The Age Atomic' are all very place-centric, where the setting itself is almost a character. But there is a universality to story that isn't just limited to science fiction.
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I think you have to learn for yourself how to write. I'm slightly mystified by creative writing courses - God love them - because I can't understand how you can explain a process that I find so baffling.
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Then about 1951 I began writing again, painfully, a novel I called in the beginning A Life Sentence on Earth, but which developed into The Tree of Man.
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I want to learn about a different religion. I grew up Catholic, but my grandfather was Jewish. Knowledge about other religions can help you understand your own better. I think it's kind of hypocritical to believe one thing and don't know about any others.
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Fashion is that thing that saved me from being sad.
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Sometimes writing a novel is not unlike having a baby. You'd have to ask a female novelist to compare the pain.
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Good acting is all in the writing. If it isn't on the page, then it really won't make any difference. You cannot act on force of personality alone.
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I'm nearly 50. I'm past being photographed falling out of bars.
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As much as I enjoy traveling and playing on stage as an artist, I really find my true sense of purpose in a room writing a song.
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When I begin writing, I have no idea what my novels are ultimately going to be about. I don't have a plot. I never consider a theme. I don't make notes or outlines.
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Music can be such a vulnerable thing, so when you're delivering a vocal or writing a piece of music, it's easy to get sideways.
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I'm not into the whole showbiz scene.
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Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.
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Your beliefs are cause maps that you impose on the world, after which you 'see' what you have already imposed.
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Try imagining James Joyce not writing about being a Catholic.
