Megan Abbott Quotes
I wrote my graduate thesis at New York University on hard-boiled fiction from the 1930s and 1940s, so, for about two years, I read nothing but Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, James Cain and Chester Himes. I developed such a love for this kind of writing.
Quotes to Explore
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When I was around eight, I learned how to touch-type at school, and I received a computer as a present. I started writing plays, and for many years I thought I would be a playwright.
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Writing 'William Shakespeare's Star Wars' was a fun exercise in mixing just the right amount of the Bard with just the right amount of everyone's favorite galaxy far, far away.
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I've always written songs that were confessional, acoustic, wordy - my writing style matches my personality. The music always has to match the mouth it comes out of.
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I love writing journalism because it's all over in two hours and comes straight off the top of the head. Writing novels is soooooo much harder. It's the hardest thing I've ever done.
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I read my books to writing workshops and friends, and I'm often focussed just on keeping them entertained. I never think about marketing at all.
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Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.
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I like the performing. And interviews, even. And the stuff that's not sitting in a room by yourself with empty paper. But I never loved writing, to tell you the truth.
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We're more interested in someone writing a really great answer that's going to be read by thousands or tens of thousands of people over the next few years as it stays on Quora and as it gets distributed on the Internet.
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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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Try imagining James Joyce not writing about being a Catholic.
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Songwriter friends will be like, 'Oh my God, when are you going to put out 'Love Triangle?'' It's just been that song for me that really helped me get a lot of writing sessions and helped jump-start my writing career.
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When you start writing about the stuff that is the central experience of your own life, you can talk about whatever you want, in whatever way you want.
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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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I'm a professional songwriter - personal attitudes have nothing to do with writing a song.
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My highest point was the first thing I won, a short story competition in a women's magazine in the Eighties. It was the first time I'd had my writing validated, and the first thing I'd ever shown anyone else.
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I've been writing about my boyhood, when I was a little kid back on my grandfather's farm where we didn't know about black widow spiders or all that stuff. But writing about that is so easy.
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There are no rules to writing a song.
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Anyone can write a specification, but if nobody implements it, what is it but a particularly dry form of science fiction.
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When I’m writing I get it up as quickly as possible. I get the bass down and a drum sound, I don’t want to get bogged down in EQ. As long as it’s working and you’ve created a convincing illusion and the mood is coming to life then I’m happy with. That’s the writing stage.
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I think sometimes all the charities are doing is mopping up the blood. It's a shame.
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Computation, storage, and communications capacity are in the hands of practically every connected person - and these are the basic physical capital means necessary for producing information, knowledge and culture, in the hands of something like 600 million to a billion people around the planet.
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I wrote my graduate thesis at New York University on hard-boiled fiction from the 1930s and 1940s, so, for about two years, I read nothing but Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, James Cain and Chester Himes. I developed such a love for this kind of writing.
