Lynne Tillman Quotes About Writing

Quotes about: Writing

• You have to create the space for the possibility of people speaking as they do. If writing is supposed to lead us in any way or educate or suggest other ways of being, it can't do so by simply reflecting what's considered to be realistic.

  Lynne Tillman

  Writing, Space, People

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• It's easy, at this point in my life, very easy to write a beautiful sentence that's meaningless. A lot of writers do that. But I don't want it to be meaningless. I want it to actually say what I want it to say, and so I'm thinking about it again and again and again.

  Lynne Tillman

  Beautiful, Writing, Thinking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I am interested in people, and I am interested enough in people that I want to be friends with a lot of people and know about their lives. So I'm not a hermit. I'm also interested in writing about other things. It goes on and on. I sometimes wish that I had a different personality. But then I would write different types of books.

  Lynne Tillman

  Book, Writing, People

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I think the slowness of exchange is over, and the idea of waiting for a response - that's gone. People don't want to wait. It's all this instantaneity. That's fine. But it also makes writing different, if you're writing for an instant exchange compared with being able to have time for more reflection.

  Lynne Tillman

  Writing, Reflection, Thinking

  Interview with James Yeh, believermag.com. January 1, 2018.

• Writing and rewriting are the same thing to me. I don't believe what Allen Ginsberg said that "first thought, then - " I just don't believe that.

  Lynne Tillman

  Believe, Writing, Firsts

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• You have to create the space for the possibility of people speaking as they do. If writing is supposed to lead us in any way or educate or suggest other ways of being, it can't do so by simply reflecting what's considered to be realistic. I'm not a realist in that way.

  Lynne Tillman

  Writing, Space, People

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I've always liked elliptical writing, whether it's Kafka or Paula Fox, and I'm often bored by writers who explain too much. I think that becomes journalism. Mostly I don't try to explain to readers who somebody is - I just write about the somebody. I'm thinking through ideas. And I have the sense that, if you're reading this, you have some interest.

  Lynne Tillman

  Reading, Writing, Thinking

  Interview with James Yeh, believermag.com. January 1, 2018.

• Wanting to know all kinds of things is perfect for novelists, because novelists are generalists. We're not specialists in anything, except, hopefully, writing.

  Lynne Tillman

  Writing, Perfect, Kind

  Interview with James Yeh, believermag.com. January 1, 2018.

• I would never want to write a character who was not thoroughly herself or himself. She's a very specific creature in my mind, and she has her thoughts, which range from skin to American history, philosophy, and the arts.

  Lynne Tillman

  Art, Philosophy, Writing

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• You know how some people are upwardly mobile? I'm sort of downwardly mobile in the publishing world, because of my sales figures and also because of the kind of books I write. Everything really counts on sales. I started out with a bigger press, my first few books. But I've always done some things with independent and small presses and small magazines and I always will.

  Lynne Tillman

  Book, Writing, Independent

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• Writers don't want to appear to be stupid. I don't know - maybe people become writers so that they can prove that they're not. Of course getting a book published doesn't mean that they're not stupid. At a certain point you have to stop trying to prove something and write because you need to think about something and want to communicate, in a very broad sense.

  Lynne Tillman

  Stupid, Book, Writing

  Interview with James Yeh, believermag.com. January 1, 2018.

• I think that sense of surprise, that you don't know where something is going, or what's going to happen, even as you write, that you're making it up as you go along - that's important to me. It's not a question of shock or surprise in a gimmicky way. It's that as you read, you become more deeply into something and into what happens, and become more involved and engaged, you're learning something or you're appreciating something or seeing something differently - that's what's surprising.

  Lynne Tillman

  Writing, Thinking, Appreciate

  Interview with James Yeh, believermag.com. January 1, 2018.

• I think it's very hard to reconcile oneself to the notion that it may not matter what you think if you still want to write.

  Lynne Tillman

  Writing, Thinking, May

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• The literary world is more time-traveling than the art world, and novelty is much more important in art than it is in writing.

  Lynne Tillman

  Art, Writing, Important

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I learned to write from reading. I had no writing classes. It's part of my thinking as the writer-author, reading, but then I also want to bring this into my characters, who also read and think. There's that great quote from Virginia Woolf - it's very simple: "...books continue each other." I think when you're a writer, you're also, hopefully, a reader, and you're bringing those earlier works into your work.

  Lynne Tillman

  Book, Reading, Writing

  Interview with James Yeh, believermag.com. January 1, 2018.

• I think about material that could work in the novel or story as I'm writing. I see if I can get there through what's happening with the character. But it's by inclination. It's not "At this moment this will happen." Usually with my characters you can't tell what has induced them to do anything. That's because, from my understanding of reality - which is always subjective - everything is overdetermined.

  Lynne Tillman

  Writing, Character, Reality

  Interview with James Yeh, believermag.com. January 1, 2018.

• A book coming out into the world can be a harsh, harsh time. And your feelings are on the line. Everything that publication is about is really not what your writing is about. Your writing is coming out of something else, and publication and being in the public are something else. And those of us who have published, in whatever way we're published, are very fortunate.

  Lynne Tillman

  Book, Writing, Feelings

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I think those women who get themselves to write essays, it's not an easy thing to do because as women, you're not encouraged to think; you're encouraged to feel. This is a broad, broad statement. So I think those women who go out on a limb and publish essays are highly conscious of how they are writing their opinions.

  Lynne Tillman

  Writing, Thinking, Opinion

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I'm not interested in safety. A great risk in writing is imagining you have something to protect. Playing it safe to placate someone or something. People talk about compromise, but often people don't even know when they're compromising, because they're not conscious of contradictions.

  Lynne Tillman

  Writing, People, Safety

  Interview with James Yeh, believermag.com. January 1, 2018.

• Whatever the style is, I want to have a sense that the writer is thinking, and really trying to get at something, and that there's a sense of discovery as the writing goes along.

  Lynne Tillman

  Writing, Thinking, Discovery

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I write about what I'm thinking about. I write about what is bothering me or what is a political, aesthetic, or ethical issue or something, and then I figure out how to do it. I don't write essays that kind of just sustain one thought. I tend to move around because that's what I like.

  Lynne Tillman

  Moving, Writing, Thinking

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I'm not just interested in the thoughts I have, but also in others' thoughts, and why not carry those forward? That's why American fiction can be so thin. All these fears, like not seeming to be original - I mean, hell, most stuff isn't. The question is whether you can articulate your thoughts for the moment in which you're living, which is a different time. Say them in a newer way. There are new events, and language changes - sensibilities change. We are writing in and of the time we're in. Oh, it's a weird time.

  Lynne Tillman

  Writing, Mean, Different

  Interview with James Yeh, believermag.com. January 1, 2018.

• In a practical sense, pain kept me from sitting down as much, so that sometimes I would have to stand to write. Not that I would necessarily have gotten anywhere anyway. But it definitely set me back to be in so much pain.

  Lynne Tillman

  Pain, Writing, Sitting Down

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I think there's much more privileging of the new in art. I think people want to think they privilege the new in writing, but I agree with Virginia Woolf. She wrote a great essay called "Craftsmanship" about how difficult it is to use new words. It's really hard, but you see them coming in because obviously, if you're going to write... I mean, even to write "cell phone" in a novel - it's so boring.

  Lynne Tillman

  Art, Writing, Mean

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I think political situations usually work their way into my writing, but not necessarily in an explicit way. The environment is so chaotic now. There is someone so entirely unreliable in charge, and reliable only in the fact that Thing - I don't say his name - is a pathological narcissist. He's going to do whatever he can to defend himself and whatever will make him look good. That's what matters to him.

  Lynne Tillman

  Writing, Thinking, Political

  Interview with James Yeh, believermag.com. January 1, 2018.

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