Patrick deWitt Quotes
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Love is dangerous; it's not something to be trifled with. As good as it feels on the way in, it feels that much worse on the way out.
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As a reader I want to be present and entertained. I don't want to be taught lessons, and I don't want to be spoken down to. I want to be treated as a peer and to be made to feel welcome.
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When you meet someone you love, whether or not they love you back, something occurs in you that makes you want to improve yourself.
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The initial spark, your affection for the characters, all those things can disappear. It's a perilous thing.
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'The Sisters Brothers' has endeared so many prize juries because the Western format has more of a broad appeal and is familiar to readers.
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I was halfway through a rough draft of 'The Sisters Brothers' when it came time to start the 'Terri' adaptation.
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Lies can be wonderful things, and when a lie is told artfully, if it's done with a degree of craftsmanship, I can't help but admire the liar.
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I've got a publicist at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt who's been working little miracles for me, but it's true the budgets aren't what they once were in terms of advertisement and book tours.
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The hardest thing in the world for a writer is to amass a readership. So many good books come out, and so many good books disappear.
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The nice thing about writing at home is that it's almost as though I'm doing it already. I get out of bed thinking of my work, and I don't have to go anywhere to do it.
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The question of likability is a bit of a puzzler for me. You know, I don't write people with likability in mind. It's more whether or not I find them compelling.
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I've always felt so fortunate to have writing to turn to every day. I'm obsessed with it.
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Often the starting point for characters, for me, is finding a little, most minor detail, and I'll go from there.
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When your protagonist bores you, you're in trouble.
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I carry a small spiral notebook with me at all times and have been doing this for many years. There's a shoe box in my closet filled with these notebooks, each riddled with notes and impressions, ideas, schemes, and soup recipes.
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'The Sisters Brothers' started out as a little bit of dialogue between these two men who became Eli and Charlie Sisters.
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More and more, I find myself turning away from everything relating to contemporary society. I don't know how healthy it is, but I am creating a very private bubble that I live in.
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I know a lot of people who use the Internet really wisely. It enriches their lives in some way.
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I am a bit prudish, I think. It's hard for me to write about sex, and I don't really care to read about it, either.
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Bernie Madoff is probably more nuanced then I'm giving him credit for, but I just couldn't get under his skin.
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One of the nice things about writing is you can take essentially painful things in your life and turn them into something that might be useful, or at least entertaining, to somebody else.
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I am increasingly unimpressed by works of art that require a college degree to understand. I think that art should be for everyone. And people should be moved by it.
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The impetus for 'The Sisters Brothers' was it occurred to me that there was no neurosis in westerns, or there's a minimal amount of it.
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Especially if you're endeavouring daily to write your own books, you read with a degree of - well, it's hard to forget you're a writer when you're reading.