Much of the way books get classified has to do with marketing decisions. I think it's more useful to think of literary books and sci-fi/fantasy books as existing on a continuum. To oppose them, to suggest that one category excludes the other, always feels bogus to me. The great Leonard Michaels line is "I wanted proximity to darkness, strangeness"? That's what I'd say I want from a book, regardless of where it falls on the fantastical spectrum - that suspense connected to a particular human character, rather than just some mechanized plot.
Whenever someone asks me about fantasy versus realism, I'm like, "I don't know, guys. Did we not all just descend into some underworld, watch strangers from our past kaleidoscope through us according to some pattern that is both illogical and has its own strange melting truth, and then wake up and have a Pop-Tart?" Why are we talking about fantasy and reality like they're opposed?
Mythology is a really beautiful vocabulary passed down through centuries that helps us understand the perennial parts of our nature.
Myth continues to be a valuable way to understand parts of our nature that we can't quantify.
I think that's the real horror story for me, how little you can ever really know about your own motivations. How in the dark we all are about the concerns and the contents of our minds.
In a way, I think we all want to look to that journalistic voice as a kind of global omniscience, a big eye to correct for our own limited purview: "Here's a realistic accounting of the world in which we live."
What passes for news is just morbid speculation or cartoonish screaming, followed by diaper commercials.
Sometimes, when you're writing sentence by sentence, you're not really sure what footprints you're going to fall into, or what ghosts might appear.
It's funny to think about the uncanny reflexively, as an author who is perhaps gradually becoming aware of my own hidden secrets. Accessing that shadowy territory really requires the physical act of writing.
I often felt myself to be an outsider, which is great training for all writers.
When I'm drafting, I suppose it's an intuitive process - figuring out when something just has a surreal glaze on it and when it grapples with something that could threaten a character's day-to-day reality.
I do think that I have a more flexible view of the interactions between people, and between human and non-human protagonists, humans and their landscapes.
Growing up, Catholic church really was such an incubator for my imagination, because all of those mysteries felt embedded in this insanely green, tropical landscape: the ocean nearby, the giant banyan trees. It all felt part of one seamless mystery to me.
I'm probably a lot closer than perhaps the contents of my early fiction suggest to a jaded Denny's waitress with smoker's-lung-black humor than a ghost hunter.
So much of the way books get classified has to do with marketing decisions. I think it's more useful to think of literary books and sci-fi/fantasy books as existing on a continuum.
It's funny, for a long time I would go watermelon-red and deny that I was a magical realist. It felt imprecise to me, a misrepresentation.
I want a real encounter with something true and disconcerting about peoples' natures.
For me, the term "literary fiction" means there's always attention paid to language, and linguistic experimentation, sophistication.
My backyard was replete with madness, it just grew indigenously in South Florida.
I do think there's something when you have an unbroken day, and it feels like you and your attention can just be together like birds again and you can actually think and dream a little.
People really get myopic as they get older. We're not a culture that encourages dreaming or distraction. We're not ever good at just being. I remember reading some Adrienne Rich quote where she talks about how important it was just to watch bubbles rise in a glass.
I have friends who are capable of writing a very rough draft and then going back and embroidering - they're sort of the cathedral builders of fiction. I never really know what I'm doing, and all my pleasure's on the level of the line. It's a weird way to move forward. It's kind of like a way to caterpillar your way through these great woods. The best ones, whatever I feel like I'm writing about, some other secret thing will begin to come into focus.
The folks I read as a kid really set me up. I owe a huge debt to Ray Bradbury and Madeleine L'Engle.
If you're gonna do something weird, just have one thing be weird.
Follow AzQuotes on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Every day we present the best quotes! Improve yourself, find your inspiration, share with friends
or simply: