Matt de la Pena Quotes

Quotes about:

• But when you read books you almost feel like you're out there in the world. Like you're going on this adventure right with the main character. At least, that's the way I do it. It's actually not that bad. Even if it is mad nerdy.

  Matt de la Pena

  Book, Adventure, Character

  7 Copy quote

• When I'm following what a character does in a book I don't have to think about my own life. Where I am. Why I'm here. My moms and my brother and my old man. I can just think about the character's life and try and figure out what's gonna happen. Plus when you're in a group home you pretty much can't go anywhere, right? But when you read books you almost feel like you're out there in the world. Like you're going on this adventure right with the main character. At least, that's the way I do it. It's actually not that bad. Even if it is mad nerdy.

  Matt de la Pena

  Mom, Brother, Book

  9 Copy quote

• I guess I don't really know what I want to do, either. Sometimes I feel like a shook-up bottle of soda. Like, I have all this passion that wants to explode, but I don't know where to aim it yet.

  Matt de la Pena

  Life, Passion, Bottles

  4 Copy quote

• Once I start writing, I am a huge reviser. To me writing is revising. I probably turn over every sentence that I write, to see if I have the rhythm right. That's why my first drafts take a really long time.

  Matt de la Pena

  Writing, Long, Firsts

  Source: therumpus.net

  6 Copy quote

• I think we all try to figure out ways to ignore the fact that life is about suffering. In the modern world, that's what we're surrounded with. We have all these little tools, such as phones and the Internet, to help us forget about suffering. Whenever you are tired, you don't have to really sit in the abyss of what it means to be alive. We always find ways to avoid it. When a ship sinks, you are sitting in it. There is no way to avoid.

  Matt de la Pena

  Tired, Mean, Thinking

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• When I'm there, it's pure silence. There are other writers there, too, and I get super competitive. I have this weird fear that some guy next to me is writing this amazing novel, so I got to compete.

  Matt de la Pena

  Writing, Silence, Guy

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• Being the first to go to college in my family was a great thing, but it was also a source of guilt. I felt like almost a sellout going to college.

  Matt de la Pena

  College, Guilt, Firsts

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• The feeling it gave me was an odd combination of weightless self-pity and excitement. I understood my life was meaningless, and this knowledge freed me up to accomplish absolutely anything.

  Matt de la Pena

  Self, Feelings, Excitement

  7 Copy quote

• To me, if the writing doesn't have rhythm, it feels dead. I lose all confidence. The music has to emerge to feel confident enough to move on to the next major chapter.

  Matt de la Pena

  Moving, Writing, Next

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• The whole guilt thing of not feeling Mexican enough was a big deal, too. On the one hand, you have your grandmother who is anointing you as a chosen one because you are light, but then you feel like you're less because you are lighter than your cousins, who are more down on the streets. You know? So that confusion was all I wrote about.

  Matt de la Pena

  Cousin, Grandmother, Light

  Source: therumpus.net

  5 Copy quote

• As an author, you go into the school, it gets written about in the paper. It sucks that your book was banned, but you almost benefit from it. The bummer is all of the incredible educators. Nobody is writing about them. They are on the frontlines still, to this day, fighting to reinstate those programs.

  Matt de la Pena

  Book, Writing, School

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• I was really drawn to spoken-word style poetry. I loved the rhythms, and for some reason, I was just drawn to this poetry as a way of expressing my feelings, because I didn't have any other outlet.

  Matt de la Pena

  Feelings, Style, Way

  4 Copy quote

• I always thought books were just the canon, things I couldn't identify with. And then I was introduced to really amazing multicultural literature - it was all things I was trying to do unsuccessfully in my poetry. It really just changed everything. I was introduced to authors like Sandra Cisneros, Gabriel García Márquez, Junot Díaz, and a lot of African American literature, as well.

  Matt de la Pena

  Book, African American, Trying

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• When you first quit your regular job and you become a full-time writer, you are paralyzed with free time. You have so much free time. When you are at home, you have a guitar. There's a cat. You got to find ways to create an environment when writing is like going to work. Be efficient with the hours you put into the book. So I go there the same time, every day - like 7:30 am - and I leave around 2 pm, or longer, if I have a deadline.

  Matt de la Pena

  Jobs, Book, Home

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• When I was in school, I was very much into just sports, mostly basketball, and didn't really see myself as much of a student. But once I got into college, I figured I wasn't going to be play beyond college. I started to think what was I going to do, since I wouldn't be able to make a living with basketball. There were a couple of things I liked to do. I wrote poetry, spoken word mostly.

  Matt de la Pena

  Basketball, Sports, Couple

  Source: therumpus.net

  6 Copy quote

• People always think there's this huge hundred-foot-high barrier that separates doing good from doing bad. But there's not. There's nothing. There's not even a little anthill. You just take one baby step in any direction and you're already there. You've doing something awful. And your life is changed forever.

  Matt de la Pena

  Baby, Thinking, Feet

  7 Copy quote

• A lot of people think that they are really cool because they don't outline. In my writing group, they would say, "I will never outline. I let the characters take me." C'mon, man - I outline the story, but it's only like one page. It's a list of possible reversals in the story, like things where everything will just change because of this certain reveal or this certain action. Then I start really digging into the character because, to me, I don't care what the story is.

  Matt de la Pena

  Writing, Character, Men

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• Whenever I teach writing I tell them to never revise as you go. Finish the first draft. This is my writing advice. I can't do that myself. I'm lying to everybody. I write a paragraph, and then I rewrite that paragraph. I want to feel like I'm standing on firm ground before I move on to the next paragraph. Mentally, I have to do that.

  Matt de la Pena

  Lying, Moving, Writing

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• All that matters to me as a reader are characters. I want characters to be real, authentic, and rounded. I will be digging into characters for at least a month. Who they are. What they are like. Outside of the story.

  Matt de la Pena

  Real, Character, Digging

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• The Color Purple really floored me. That book was just incredible because I loved the language. The biggest deal of that book was that I loved the poetry of broken English. Broken English and vernacular. It just floored me that you can actually capture the way people really talked. And I also really connected to the social class element.

  Matt de la Pena

  Book, Color, Class

  Source: therumpus.net

  9 Copy quote

• When I finish a book, I'll go to that file and look through them. And I'll say, these are three that really excite me and I want to do them next. You have the business part; of those three, is the publisher excited about one? Is the agent?

  Matt de la Pena

  Book, Three, Looks

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• I feel like I have a lot of novel ideas, but they often come up while I'm already in the process of working on a book. You have to watch out with the slutty new idea.

  Matt de la Pena

  Book, Ideas, Watches

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• But mostly I remember every morning before school. How she'd say "Hey, honey!" just I was walking out the apartment door. And me stopping and turning around and saying "What?" And her saying "I love you." And me rolling my eyes like I just wanted to hurry up so I didn't miss the bus. I'd start going again and she'd say "Hey, honey!" and I'd pretend I was so annoyed 'cause she was wasting time and I had to go catch the bus. And how secretly it was my favorite part of every day.

  Matt de la Pena

  Morning, Love You, School

  4 Copy quote

• The second book, which was probably more from a professional standpoint - when I read Junot Díaz's Drown, I was like, Oh my god, you can write these stories and people will actually read them beyond your own little community. This guy's book is blowing up and it seems like [he's writing about] the neighborhood that I grew up in. That was a big deal. I read that in graduate school, so that's when I was really taking writing seriously, but I didn't know you could do it. I didn't know you can actually be an author. It was a weird epiphany.

  Matt de la Pena

  Book, Writing, School

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• I worked in a schizophrenic home when I was an undergrad. You learned to be jaded to the crazy things they would say to you, but there was one man that I always gave crazy respect to, even though he would say the exact same thing to me every single day.

  Matt de la Pena

  Crazy, Home, Men

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

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