- Like
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- Nov 07, 2020
Elizabeth Mccracken Quotes
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- Last Updated on May 30, 2021
- Place
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- Nov 07, 2020
I work in my office on the campus of the University of Texas. It's the sort of place described as 'book-lined', but it's recently tipped over into 'fire-hazard' territory.
- Good
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- Nov 07, 2020
There's a good chance that in 40 years, after the floods, people zipping by on scavenged jetpacks with their scavenged baseball caps on backwards, I will be in my rocking chair saying bitterly, 'I remember when 'all right' was two words.'
- Own
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- Nov 07, 2020
I own an e-reader, but I use it almost exclusively to read things that aren't books - student theses, unbound galleys.
- New
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- Nov 07, 2020
At my first library job, I worked with a woman named Sheila Brownstein, who was The Reader's Advisor. She was a short, bosomy Englishwoman who accosted people at the shelves and asked if they wanted advice on what to read, and if the answer was yes, she asked what writers they already loved and then suggested somebody new.
- Book
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- Nov 07, 2020
I like seeing my physical progress through a volume, particularly if it's a big book.
- Chair
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- Nov 07, 2020
I used to be a writer with superstitions worthy of a professional baseball player: I needed a certain desk chair and a certain armchair and a certain desk arrangement, and I could only get really useful work done between 8 P.M. and 3 A.M. Then I started to move, and I couldn't bring my chairs with me.
- How
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- Nov 07, 2020
Revising stuff lately, I was shocked to see how often my characters scratched their ankles, felt their feet, and touched their own ears.
- People
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- Nov 07, 2020
When it comes to other people's writing, my older influences are more powerful than more recent ones, partially because I'm now more worried that I'll suddenly accidentally steal something from another writer.
- Moments
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- Nov 07, 2020
Life likes jokes; life is constantly making jokes, even at the most inopportune moments.
- Life
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- Nov 07, 2020
You write the way you think about the world. My motto in times of trouble - and I'm speaking of life, not writing - is 'no humor too black.'
- Die
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- Nov 07, 2020
It's hard to know which made me more aware of the impossibility of protecting children - having a child die or having had two live.
- Funny
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- Nov 07, 2020
Ordinarily, I'd claim that I'd never write directly about my children, but the opening conversation of 'Peter Elroy' is a verbatim conversation that my children had that I just loved: morbid, funny, passionate, and obsessed with the truth of things - all natural qualities of children that I'd like my work to contain.
- Differs
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- Nov 07, 2020
You believe in God or statistics or the way your narrative differs from other people.
- My Life
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- Nov 07, 2020
Sadness was something I was thinking about in my life outside of writing, so it wormed itself into whatever I wrote.
- Memory
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- Nov 07, 2020
I have a memory of my fourth-grade self wanting to be the first woman president of the United States, but I think that has a lot more to do with my love of world records and reference books than a love of serving my country.
- Childhood
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- Nov 07, 2020
I've always been absolutely appalling about the future, but I sort of think that was my childhood religion. We were future deniers. You did your best in the present, which was all around you.
- Forward
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- Nov 07, 2020
I feel like I don't understand time in novels, really. I bumble forward, is all.
- Nobody
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- Nov 07, 2020
When I tell people there are three stories in 'Thunderstruck' that were from the same wrecked novel, they want to guess what they are. Nobody has. There are no characters or timelines in common. They're structured very differently. A good novel wouldn't have pulled apart so easily.
- Light
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- Nov 07, 2020
Short fiction is like low relief. And if your story has no humor in it, then you're trying to look at something in the pitch dark. With the light of humor, it throws what you're writing into relief so that you can actually see it.
- Joking
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- Nov 07, 2020
I can't imagine not joking even at the worst of times. And for me, it's sort of automatic.
- Better
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- Nov 07, 2020
I sort of don't believe in closure. In the sense that it doesn't make me feel better to think that something is over.
- Fear
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- Nov 07, 2020
There are two MFA programs here at the University of Texas, and I read on the jury of both of them. And it's amazing to me how many really talented young writers seem to fear humor.
- I Am
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- Nov 07, 2020
I am not a therapy person, but I understand what therapy does. It's a way of translating dark thoughts into something manageable.
- Expects
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- Nov 07, 2020
When you've lost a baby, everyone around you expects you to be fine once the new baby is born, as though that somehow takes away the pain of losing the first child. I needed to express how wrong that was.
- Life
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- Nov 07, 2020
I wanted to acknowledge that life goes on but that death goes on, too. A person who is dead is a long, long story.
- Hard
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- Nov 07, 2020
Once I started writing novels, I understood how hard it was to write really good short stories.
- People
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- Nov 07, 2020
In 'Property,' none of the characters are based on any real people, but the house is very much the house that I moved into in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.
- Good
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- Nov 07, 2020
I always want the last line to be really good, which may sound silly, but I want it to be a last pleasing line.
- Like
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- Nov 07, 2020
When I was in college, I wrote poetry very seriously, and then once I had started writing short stories, I didn't go back to poetry, partially because I felt like I understood how incredibly difficult it was.
- Computers
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- Nov 07, 2020
For about half an hour in mid-1992, I knew as much as any layperson about the pleasures of remote access of other people's computers.
- Green
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- Nov 07, 2020
In library science school, back in the years of glowing green non-graphical screens and protocols called Archie and Veronica, I wrote Internet documentation.
- Love
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- Nov 07, 2020
There were a lot of things I loved about working in a library, but mostly I miss the library patrons. I love books, but books are everywhere. Library patrons are as various and oddball and democratic as library books.
- Blessing
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- Nov 07, 2020
Tweeting about objects means I don't need to bid on them, which is a blessing. Buying something is a way of saying, 'Look at this!' So is tweeting. So, I guess, is writing fiction.
- Life
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- Nov 07, 2020
There was a time in my life when I wasn't sure I'd ever write a short story again because I had started writing novels, and I am fundamentally a lazy person, and the fact is that a novel is a lazy person's form, really. That is, you can amble; you can digress.
- Me
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- Nov 07, 2020
The thing that most interests me about writing - there are lots of things, but the thing I can't do without - is the hit of happiness a lovely sentence delivers.
- Heart
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- Nov 07, 2020
I have been the person who tries to keep conversation light while talking to someone whose heart has been smashed.
- People
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- Nov 07, 2020
In general, I think people are worried about saying the wrong thing to any grieving person. On a very basic level, I think they're frightened of touching off tears or sorrow, as though someone tearing up at the mention of unhappy news would be the mentioner's fault.
- Grieving
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- Nov 07, 2020
Remember that a woman who has given birth to a dead child has given birth and is recovering physically, too. Don't be afraid of grieving parents.
- Looks
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- Nov 07, 2020