Stephen McCauley Quotes
The experience of writing under a pseudonym was tremendously liberating; I could write what I wanted.
Quotes to Explore
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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 studied philosophy, religious studies, and English. My training was writing four full-length novels and hiring an editor to tear them apart. I had enough money to do that, and then rewriting and rewriting and rewriting.
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Judgment comes from experience - and experience comes from bad judgment.
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Whether you want to entertain or to provoke, to break hearts or reassure them, what you bring to your writing must consist of your longings and disappointments.
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It had always been a dream of mine to come to New York to work. Coming to New York and looking for work is one thing, but coming to New York and already having a job and feeling like you are already part of the city has been an amazing experience for me.
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Imagination is a very potent thing, and in the uneducated often usurps the place of genuine experience.
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I didn't have a desk to write 'Red Queen' on, so I got a nice writing desk.
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When they come to Europe, they are confronted by still closed borders. Thus, the concept of open borders is a very selective concept, one that is not taken seriously at all in the experience of non-Europeans.
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That music and the lyrical aspects of Razorblade Romance is so personal to me that, now with me being grown up a bit and meeting new people and doing new things, it makes me look at the same things I was writing about back in the day through a different colored lens.
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I like to think that I'm one of the few people in public life who write their own material. I write every word. And I really enjoy writing - especially my political commentary.
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The mind when it has an old experience will add that data into its current experience, and it keeps coming up with wrong answers.
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It's so different when you change your hair color, you're treated so differently. It's a very funny experience. It's fun - I love changing up my hair.
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Whatever it is you want to do, take a job in that field. You will learn by experience and, slow and steady, you'll get it done!
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I worry that people think you have to go to a university to be a good writer, which is categorically untrue. I don't think I learned how to write at Oxford. I did not go to any creative writing classes or anything.
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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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Nature is full of infinite causes which were never set forth in experience.
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My interest is in experience that is wordless and silent, and in the fact that this experience can be expressed for me in art work which is also wordless and silent.
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The stuff I write about doesn't, like, necessarily leave people feeling warm and fuzzy. I'm writing in a territory that's, like, contested and full of prickliness. And I find that people project their problems onto me or something.
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My life has two modes. One is sitting around writing and contemplating or building things. The other is execution mode. It takes a while to switch from one to the other.
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Hands-on experience at the critical time, not systematic knowledge, is what counts in the making of a naturalist. Better to be an untutored savage for a while, not to know the names or anatomical detail. Better to spend stretches of time just searching and dreaming.
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Softly, at first, as if it hardly meant it, the snow began to fall.
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I see it as a responsibility of mine to teach others.
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The experience of writing under a pseudonym was tremendously liberating; I could write what I wanted.
