Andrew Sean Greer Quotes
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'The Story Of A Marriage' was initially a short story I wrote, and before that, it was a family story. It was a story that a relative of mine told me about herself in the '50s, and it was a story that no one else in my family believes, and it might not be true.
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It's hard to tell if I've had writer's block because it seems to me that it's when nothing comes, but, you know, every day you stare at that computer screen, and I think, 'It's never going to happen today. How can I write three pages?' And the hours pass, and they haven't shown up, and then at the very end it always happens, so it's willpower.
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You write three pages over six hours, and you don't feel like you've gotten anywhere, but if you've done a beautiful metaphor or a lovely sentence, or you finally got to some moment you wanted, then that's worth it. Then you can close your computer and get a little relief.
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A downside to being a successful novelist? Wow - I can't imagine one.
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My mother taught me to ask people about the things they love.
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My fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. Poppy, had us each write a 'novel,' whatever that meant to us. It must have been 10 pages long, and we bound it and colored the front. And she wrote on mine, 'I can't wait till your real novel comes out. Give me a call.'
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I have come to this conclusion: if 'sentimentality' is lazy emotion, then the term itself is lazy criticism.
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To distract myself from writing, I was singing Bob Dylan's 'My Back Pages.' You know, 'I was so much older then; I'm younger than that now.' I thought, 'I should write a character like that.'
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I don't read literary blogs. I used to read them, but it was upsetting when they would talk, in a snarky way, about my friends.
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Human love and desire is my bag.
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With each book, I'm trying to do something that terrifies me.
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Every writer is an outsider.
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My grandmother was not a great storyteller.
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Other writers know what you're going through, what you're talking about when you write.
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Science fiction writers, when I was a kid, were a big deal.
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My own accumulation of influences is actually what made me a writer in the first place.
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I don't think I'm a gay activist. I used to be.
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They say you hit your stride as a writer at about 50. I'm hoping to do that.
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I never wanted to be a scientist.
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Both my parents were atheists, and my grandmother was an atheist in rural Kentucky, and so they were trying to make sure that my brother and I would be atheists, too, and it worked, which doesn't mean that they didn't teach us a lot of wonder of science and of nature and the world and all of that.
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I think I'm a terrible researcher. I find it very boring and frustrating, but the things you can find are better than what I could imagine. And when you find them, it's wonderful, and they don't feel artificial.
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I was raised Unitarian, and my mother said she took us to church so that we wouldn't get religious later in life.
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You can look at my books and not find particular joy on every page because, of course, what you want to write about is the difficulty of the human experience. You don't want to lie about things to make happy endings and weddings if they don't deserve to happen. But I would be lying if I didn't try to communicate some of the pleasure of being alive.
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There's a certain point in chemistry and in calculus where I reached the end of my abilities, and I realized, 'This is where I'm stupid.'