Christopher Bollen Quotes
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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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In a lot of ways, work was my graduate school.
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I have to say I do read partly for escapism. Why can't I escape and learn something?
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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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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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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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Safety, reputation, their lives, their friends, and their world. Writers typically try to avoid that because it's not expedient.
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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 feel that I'm solid at description.
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When you create a fence, you keep people out, but you also limit your mobility.
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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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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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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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I've never even done a residency.
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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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I had been going out to Orient for several years.
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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 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.
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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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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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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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There's something about fear and aesthetic that go hand in hand.
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I smoke cigarettes when I write, which is disgusting, but it really helps me.