Chad Harbach Quotes - Page 2

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• Fiction and nonfiction, for me, involve very different processes.

  Chad Harbach

  Different, Fiction, Process

  4 Copy quote

• It remained an open question, how much sympathy love could stand.

  Chad Harbach

  Chad Harbach (2011). “The Art of Fielding: A Novel”, p.91, Hachette UK

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• You are skilled. I exhort you.

  Chad Harbach

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• The effects of MFA programs, and the rise of creative writing instruction more generally, are far more diffuse than people think. Even if you're a writer who has avoided institutions your whole life, you're still going to be reading a lot of writers who have MFAs, and are affiliated with universities.

  Chad Harbach

  Reading, Writing, Thinking

  Source: therumpus.net

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• There are three stages: Thoughtless being. Thought. Return to thoughtless being.

  Chad Harbach

  Three, Return, Stage

  Chad Harbach, Darran McCann, Lily Tuck, Will Wiles, Evan Mandery (2012). “Fiction4theFuture: Free New Fiction”, p.22, HarperCollins UK

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• But people didn't forgive you for doing what felt right-that was the last thing they forgave you for.

  Chad Harbach

  Forgiveness, People, Forgiving

  Chad Harbach (2011). “The Art of Fielding: A Novel”, p.192, Hachette UK

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• The Human Condition being, basically, that we’re alive and have access to beauty, can even erratically create it, but will someday be dead and will not.

  Chad Harbach

  Alive, Someday, Human Condition

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• I think the MFA programs have had a real effect on the state of American fiction, but I don't think it's a question of "this is written by someone with an MFA, and this isn't." I challenge anyone to identify a book in that way. It's totally impossible.

  Chad Harbach

  Real, Book, Thinking

  Source: therumpus.net

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• There are no whys in a person's life, and very few hows. In the end, in search of useful wisdom, you could only come back to the most hackneyed concepts, like kindness, forbearance, infinite patience. Solomon and Lincoln: This too shall pass. Damn right it will. Or Chekhov: Nothing passes. Equally true.

  Chad Harbach

  Kindness, Infinite, Chekhov

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• Poetry might be more about the eternal verities, the essence of the human soul, and - although it's reductive to say so - fiction has perhaps been more about the differences between the unconstrained world of the imagination and the realities you run into, day-to-day, when you're riding your donkey.

  Chad Harbach

  Running, Reality, Differences

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Most great books have been about striving in some sense. In a sense, money is the great topic of the novel. You couldn't necessarily say that about poetry.

  Chad Harbach

  Book, Topics, Strive

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• I tended to write the book in these bursts of two or three months at a time. So I would know, or at least feel securely, that for the next few months I was at least going to have a few hours a day.

  Chad Harbach

  Book, Writing, Two

  Source: www.gq.com

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• I feel like every time I start up, it's like a truck you have to get into 15th gear, so you very solely crank into that mental space where you feel really immersed in the world of the book and then you can just kind of go.

  Chad Harbach

  Book, Space, Gears

  Source: www.gq.com

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• Another older writer that had a huge influence on me is Chekhov. More contemporarily, it's hard to say.

  Chad Harbach

  Influence, Chekhov, Huge

  Source: www.gq.com

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• I do think that sports is really rich dramatically that, and this is kind of a self-serving thing to say, but I wonder why there aren't more, better sports novels.

  Chad Harbach

  Sports, Thinking, Self

  Source: www.gq.com

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• The idea of the writer who writes nineteen novels, with various ups and downs and levels of experimentation, isn't around so much now. There's a focus, I think, on fewer books, with more pressure on each book to succeed. With that there comes, I think, a certain pressure towards shapeliness in fiction. Towards neatness. And I think writers feel that, and it can effect how they write.

  Chad Harbach

  Book, Writing, Thinking

  Source: therumpus.net

  8 Copy quote

• Most writers, most books, you have no idea whether it was a dollar or a million dollars.

  Chad Harbach

  Book, Ideas, Dollars

  Source: www.gq.com

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• It's very hard right now to be a pro sports fan. The economics of this stuff is abysmal.

  Chad Harbach

  Sports, Fans, Stuff

  Source: www.gq.com

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• You don't have to even see the common man anymore if you don't want to! Only through the telescope on your yacht.

  Chad Harbach

  Men, Telescopes, Want

  Source: www.gq.com

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• Looking at and shaping your own work is a very intuitive process. You see something you've written in your notebook. It's there on the page and either feels right or it doesn't, and it's hard sometimes to go beyond that and discover why it feels that way.

  Chad Harbach

  Notebook, Pages, Way

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I think that it is very interesting to write about a team because a team is a group of people who work in very close quarters and have very intense relationships so - in my days of playing sports, I was very rarely on a team that did not have it's own peculiar dynamic, and you wind up having very intense feelings for good and for bad about these people with whom you spend many hours a day.

  Chad Harbach

  Sports, Team, Writing

  Source: www.gq.com

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• The challenge for any fiction writer is that your job involves simply sitting at a desk for a very, very long time.

  Chad Harbach

  Jobs, Long, Challenges

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I sold a book six years after I left an MFA program. In between, there was a lot of endurance of poverty and a lot of fighting off doubt. It's all a part of the process of being or becoming a writer.

  Chad Harbach

  Book, Fighting, Years

  Source: therumpus.net

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• A lot of my close friends had tolerantly washed their hands of the whole idea of me writing a book. They had said to themselves, "I don't know what he's doing."

  Chad Harbach

  Book, Writing, Hands

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• My favorite sports novel is End Zone by Delillo. It's such a great looking book too, the black cover with the football player on it. It's just a fantastic little book.

  Chad Harbach

  Sports, Football, Book

  Source: www.gq.com

  4 Copy quote

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