Jeff VanderMeer Quotes

Quotes about:

• Some questions will ruin you if you are denied the answer long enough.

  Jeff VanderMeer

  Long, Answers, Ruins

  Jeff VanderMeer (2014). “Annihilation: A Novel”, p.168, Macmillan

  46 Copy quote

• Nothing that lived and breathed was truly objective—even in a vacuum, even if all that possessed the brain was a self-immolating desire for the truth.

  Jeff VanderMeer

  Self, Brain, Desire

  Jeff VanderMeer (2014). “Annihilation: A Novel”, p.8, Macmillan

  17 Copy quote

• When you think about the complexity of our natural world - plants using quantum mechanics for photosynthesis, for example - a smartphone begins to look like a pretty dumb object.

  Jeff VanderMeer

  Thinking, Smartphones, Dumb

  Source: www.buzzfeed.com

  29 Copy quote

• The map had been the first form of misdirection, for what is a map but a way of emphasizing some things and making other things invisible?

  Jeff VanderMeer

  Way, Firsts, Maps

  Jeff VanderMeer (2014). “Annihilation: A Novel”, p.66, Macmillan

  19 Copy quote

• When we wake, it is because something, some event, some pinprick even, disturbs the edges of what we’ve taken as reality.

  Jeff VanderMeer

  Taken, Reality, Events

  Jeff VanderMeer (2014). “Annihilation: A Novel”, p.188, Macmillan

  7 Copy quote

• Silence creates it's own violence.

  Jeff VanderMeer

  Silence, Violence

  6 Copy quote

• It is the nature of the writer to question the validity of his world and yet rely on his senses to describe it. From what other tension can great literature be born?

  Jeff VanderMeer

  Literature, World, Born

  Jeff Vandermeer (2007). “City of Saints and Madmen”, p.261, Spectra

  4 Copy quote

• Imbuing fiction with a life that extends beyond the last word is in some ways the goal: the ending that goes beyond the ending in the reader's mind, so invested are they in the story.

  Jeff VanderMeer

  Goal, Mind, Fiction

  7 Copy quote

• That's how the madness of the world tries to colonize you: from the outside in, forcing you to live in its reality.

  Jeff VanderMeer

  Life, Reality, Trying

  5 Copy quote

• Position yourself to succeed by doing the other things in your life that rejuvenate you. You can create little islands of time away from your novel that will help preserve your balance. Exhaustion will affect both your writing’s quality and your productivity.

  Jeff VanderMeer

  Writing, Islands, Balance

  4 Copy quote

• But what if you discover that the price of purpose is to render invisible so many other things?

  Jeff VanderMeer

  What If, Purpose, Invisible

  Jeff VanderMeer (2014). “Acceptance: A Novel”, p.157, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

• My best time to write is right after coffee and breakfast - four eggs because, full disclosure: I'm really a komodo dragon - and that's because then I'm energized but not so awake that the critical voice clicks on, the voice that sometimes says, "Don't write that," or "Man, that sentence is terrible - you should give up and go pet the cats."

  Jeff VanderMeer

  Giving Up, Coffee, Writing

  Source: www.buzzfeed.com

  5 Copy quote

• If I wasn't a writer, I don't know what I'd be. Probably a marine biologist or something.

  Jeff VanderMeer

  Marine, Biologist, Knows

  Source: www.avclub.com

  4 Copy quote

• You can be deeply non-serious and still focused, disciplined, and on task.

  Jeff VanderMeer

  Tasks, Serious, Stills

  Source: www.barnesandnoble.com

  5 Copy quote

• All musical talent is absent in me, to the point of being unable to play board games that require you to hum a tune while others guess what it is, since all my humming sounds the same. Musical instruments have always seemed like alien artifacts to me, even as I really admire anyone who can play one.

  Jeff VanderMeer

  Games, Play, Musical

  Source: www.esquire.com

  4 Copy quote

• I've always wrestled with the difference between plot and structure, and after re-reading a lot of writing books I realized I wasn't alone.

  Jeff VanderMeer

  Book, Reading, Writing

  Source: www.barnesandnoble.com

  4 Copy quote

• Angela Carter, Leonora Carrington, even nonsurrealists like Kafka and Nabokov - writers like these, who create paths between the firmly grounded and flights of fantasy, are my personal North Star.

  Jeff VanderMeer

  Stars, Path, Fantasy

  Source: www.barnesandnoble.com

  4 Copy quote

• The world is a mysterious place and the very limitation of our senses in exploring it means we are sometimes aware of there being something beyond our ken.

  Jeff VanderMeer

  Mean, World, Mysterious

  Source: www.buzzfeed.com

  4 Copy quote

• So many differing opinions and philosophies... are rarely housed under the roof of a single magazine.

  Jeff VanderMeer

  Philosophy, Magazines, Opinion

  7 Copy quote

• What occurs after revelation and paralysis?

  Jeff VanderMeer

  Revelations, Paralysis

  Jeff VanderMeer (2014). “Annihilation: A Novel”, p.179, Macmillan

  5 Copy quote

• Dreams, though, are just one kind of inspiration - no more or less special than something in a newspaper article or from the world around you sparking inspiration.

  Jeff VanderMeer

  Dream, Inspiration, Special

  Source: www.buzzfeed.com

  4 Copy quote

• Literary influences are harder for me to point to, because mostly it's a mulch of all of my past reading.

  Jeff VanderMeer

  Reading, Past, Influence

  Source: www.buzzfeed.com

  7 Copy quote

• I like to go through the zine sections of local bookstores when on the road and have found a lot of really great kind of underground stuff that way. It all feeds into everything else.

  Jeff VanderMeer

  Zines, Bookstores, Stuff

  Source: www.buzzfeed.com

  4 Copy quote

• The best visual book I can think of is Lynda Barry's What It Is, but although I refer to it all the time it's not a creative writing book per se.

  Jeff VanderMeer

  Book, Writing, Thinking

  Source: www.barnesandnoble.com

  4 Copy quote

• What I envy about musicians is, they have this more direct relationship with the audience. They don't have to go through words. Sure, the lyrics count, but they go more immediately into your brain. There's so much more work you have to put in as a writer - not just with the actual book, but how it's packaged and everything.

  Jeff VanderMeer

  Book, Envy, Brain

  Source: www.avclub.com

  4 Copy quote

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