Philipp Meyer Quotes

• The entire history of humanity is marked by a single inexorable movement - from animal instinct toward rational thought, from inborn behavior toward acquired knowledge. A half-grown panther abandoned in the wilderness will grow up to be a perfectly normal panther. But a half-grown child similarly abandoned will grow up into an unrecognizable savage, unfit for normal society. Yet there are those who insist the opposite: that we are creatures of instinct, like wolves.

  Philipp Meyer

  Children, Growing Up, Animal

  48 Copy quote

• Give a small number of people the power to enrich themselves beyond everyone's wildest dreams, a philosophical rationale to explain all the damage they're causing, and they will not stop until they've run the world economy off a cliff.

  Philipp Meyer

  Running, Dream, Philosophical

  4 Copy quote

• When you start to look at Native American history, you realize that, very far from being a peaceful, morally superior people, Native Americans were not that different from Europeans.

  Philipp Meyer

  Native American, People, Peaceful

  "Philipp Meyer on 'The Son'". Interview with Kevin Nance, www.chicagotribune.com. June 8, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

• Nothing prepares you for making art except making art. You have to do it to get better.

  Philipp Meyer

  Art, Get Better

  7 Copy quote

• No land was ever acquired honestly in the history of the earth.

  Philipp Meyer

  Land, Earth, Honestly

  Philipp Meyer (2013). “The Son”, p.145, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

• We moved to Baltimore, Maryland, in 1979, when I was five. The funny thing is that, even though Baltimore had one of the top murder rates in the country in those days, I grew up hearing about how dangerous New York was.

  Philipp Meyer

  Country, New York, Funny Things

  Interview with Jennifer L. Knox, www.newyorker.com. June 14-21, 2010.

  4 Copy quote

• If no one heard your sounds then you did not really make them.

  Philipp Meyer

  Sound, Heard, Ifs

  Philipp Meyer (2009). “American Rust”, p.353, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

• When novels deal in abstractions, they generally go off the rails.

  Philipp Meyer

  Novel, Deals, Rail

  4 Copy quote

• When I finish a book, I get extremely restless; I have to aggressively find ways to occupy myself; going off into the woods alone, doing things that are physically or mentally demanding to keep myself busy until the next big idea comes.

  Philipp Meyer

  Book, Ideas, Woods

  4 Copy quote

• You have to believe in yourself and only trust your own vision and instincts. If Id listened to what other people thought about my work in the first 10 years that I was a writer, I never would have made it to begin with.

  Philipp Meyer

  Believe, Years, People

  "Philipp Meyer: 'We don't have a good context for where we come from as Americans'" by Gemma Kappala-Ramsamy, www.theguardian.com. July 21, 2013.

  5 Copy quote

• At 16, I dropped out of school and spent five years working as a bicycle mechanic and volunteering in a Trauma Centre before ultimately deciding to go to university.

  Philipp Meyer

  School, Years, Volunteer

  4 Copy quote

• Each time a high-wage job is lost, a family is turned upside down. And that affects the communities where they live.

  Philipp Meyer

  Jobs, Community, Down And

  4 Copy quote

• My first published novel, American Rust, took three and a half years of full-time work to write. But I wrote two apprentice novels before that.

  Philipp Meyer

  Writing, Years, Two

  Interview with Jennifer L. Knox, www.newyorker.com. June 14-21, 2010.

  4 Copy quote

• She wondered how people would remember her. She had not made enough to spread her wealth around like Carnegie, to erase any sins that had attached to her name, she had failed, she had not reached the golden bough. The liberals would cheer her death. They would light marijuana cigarettes and drive to their sushi restaurants and eat fresh food that had traveled eight thousand miles. They would spend all of supper complaining about people like her, and when they got home their houses would be cold and they'd press a button on a wall to get warm. The whole time complaining about big oil.

  Philipp Meyer

  Cheer, Wall, Home

  "The Son". Book by Philipp Meyer, 2013.

  14 Copy quote

• You ought to be able to grow up in a place and not have to get the hell out of it when you turn eighteen.

  Philipp Meyer

  Growing Up, Able, Hell

  Philipp Meyer (2009). “American Rust”, p.119, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

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