Christopher Bollen Quotes
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Secrets are never secure because they are always at risk of being found out.
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One day I want to write a full-on horror book.
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Safety, reputation, their lives, their friends, and their world. Writers typically try to avoid that because it's not expedient.
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I feel that I'm solid at description.
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The Greeks really believed in history. They believed that the past had consequences and that you might be punished for the sins of your father. America, and particularly New York, runs on the idea that history doesn't matter. There is no history. There is only the never-ending present. You don't even have your family because you moved here to get away from them, so even that idea of personal history has been cut at the knees.
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I like to be alone, I mean, I really love to be alone more than anything else, and I don't really like to talk about myself to death, and I don't like to share too much, and I don't really have dreams of extreme fame or even extreme respect.
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There seem to be two ways of generating interest from the reader: withholding information or by telling the reader on the first page exactly what's going to happen.
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It's just as political, what you do in the bedroom is just as political as what you do in public.
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If you've been in the art world for more than eight years, you realize another generation is making the exact same work as the previous generation - but treating it like it's never been done before. It becomes very cyclical very quickly.
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I really believe there is something in the nature of a democracy that naturally leads people to distrust the government, to assume because a democracy is built by people just like themselves that there must be secret plots and cover-ups and wizards behind the scenes running the machine.
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It is a little out of touch to presume that someone wants to follow your every observation and insight over the course of hundreds of pages without any sort of payoff. That's why writing isn't a one-way street. You have to give something back: an interesting plot, a surprise, a laugh, a moment of tenderness, a mystery for the reader to piece together.
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The death drive is parasitic. It runs off of other drives, leeching off of them.
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My dad liked more macho adventure books like Shogun or spy novels. My mother reads murder mysteries. In fact, so does her mother, my grandma. That's where I trace the familial line of murder mystery obsession.
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It's hard for me to figure out where I want to be. But it's definitely in New York. I feel like New York throws different challenges at you and you can be more creative.
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I also remember when I watched Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer 1990 at, like, age 15. That scared the crap out of me. Because it didn't operate inside the usual conventions of the horror genre in the way that I could accept. I can accept horny teenager counselors being murdered at camp. But I couldn't accept the derangement of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, which was that anyone could be murdered at any moment - whole families, with no build-up music and no meaning. It terrified me.
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Talking to all those great writers and artists for the magazine was a form of graduate school for me.
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I had been going out to Orient for several years.
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My parents were great parents, but for some bizarre reason they allowed me to watch whatever I wanted on TV, we had cable. And I constantly watched horror movies.
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When you create a fence, you keep people out, but you also limit your mobility.
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I smoke cigarettes when I write, which is disgusting, but it really helps me.
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There are certain moments where artwork might seem like it's part of someone's career - if you really know the art world - , but I did my best to prevent that overlap.
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I've never even done a residency.
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I just think, as writers, especially with a book that takes years to write, you sort of wake up every morning hoping and praying that you can make it work for the day.
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I don't think secrets are a bad thing. I think there's this idea that everything needs to be transparent in order for it to be free.