Lauren Groff Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• I had a series of terrible jobs, whatever would allow me to write for four hours during the day. During that time I wrote three novels - all of which were extraordinarily poor. I decided after that to go and get my MFA.

  Lauren Groff

  Writing, Hours, Poor

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• Even the presence of my kids cannot, during those writing hours, disturb me. Unless there's a bone sticking out of their arm, I'm not interested.

  Lauren Groff

  Writing, Kids, Bones

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• When I meet people I try to make a joke out of my occupation, explaining that what I do all day is sit alone in a darkened room, flicking through some pages, jumping on a treadmill now and then. I keep my serious work as a writer private, but that doesn't mean it's not serious work - quite the opposite.

  Lauren Groff

  Mean, People, Trying

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• I kept a lot of my thoughts inside myself. So, perhaps more than is normal, I'm always questioning my role as a writer. I'm always stopping and asking myself: Do I have the right to tell this story? Is it a story that deserves to be heard? And as for whether I think of myself as a Writer with a capital "W," I very much hope I never do.

  Lauren Groff

  Thinking, Questioning, My Thoughts

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• I do like Twitter. Writing is a solitary pursuit, and it can get lonely. I like to go into Twitter for a short period of time, communicate with clever friends, and then switch it off. That's perfect for me.

  Lauren Groff

  Lonely, Clever, Writing

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• Our human impulse is to control everything, but fiction seems to me to be about allowing an element of mystery into the text.

  Lauren Groff

  Mystery, Impulse

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• Writing by hand is a way of letting mystery into my writing. But I'm constantly trying to figure out how to do this job. It's a work in progress.

  Lauren Groff

  Writing, Progress, Trying

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• I feel like in American fiction we're moving out of a period of intense irony, and I'm very glad about that. I feel like irony is fine for its own sake but shouldn't be the sole reason to write a book. It has been an ironic world view: that's the best way I can describe it. I'm a fan of earnestness. I feel like there's a new wave of earnestness and I'd be happy if I'm some small part of that.

  Lauren Groff

  Book, Moving, Writing

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• I don't believe that fiction is dead. I know there are some people who believe that it's an outdated art form, and that to express truth today you need to work in different forms, to write books where it's perhaps not clear what's fiction and what's memoir. I have nothing against those books and love many of them very much. But we have enough space for everyone, traditional realists and hybrid writers, and experimental writers all.

  Lauren Groff

  Art, Believe, Book

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• I'm feminist in that I believe that there should be equality between men and women. I get deeply frustrated on a daily basis by the enormous gender divide in the U.S. literary world. But I don't know how to deal with it, so I don't tend to say much about it.

  Lauren Groff

  Believe, Men, Feminist

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• When I write a new draft, I don't like to feel I'm tied to any previous version. That's why I don't use a computer to write. The text looks, on the screen, too much like a book. It's not a book - it's a bad first draft of something that could one day be a book.

  Lauren Groff

  Book, Writing, One Day

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• I want to be identified as a writer, not a Southern writer, not a woman writer, not a woman from this or that place, but unfortunately it doesn't always happen.

  Lauren Groff

  Southern

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• A female writer does definitely get more attention if she writes about male characters. It's true. It's considered somehow more literary, in the same way that it's more literary to write about supposedly male subjects, such as war. You're considered more seriously by the literary establishment.

  Lauren Groff

  War, Writing, Character

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• I'm ambivalent about the Orange Prize. I was really proud to be shortlisted alongside the other writers, whom I admire. That said, I don't know if it's best way of addressing gender inequality problems.

  Lauren Groff

  Proud, Problem, Gender

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• The idea of legitimacy is something I suppose I deal with in my fiction, and in part it's probably a response to my upbringing. When I was growing up I was the middle child, pathologically shy, in a family with a very loud and opinionated older brother, and I felt as if I never had the right to speak. As a result, I simply didn't speak very much.

  Lauren Groff

  Brother, Children, Growing Up

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• I'm kind of a control freak. But there are others like me.

  Lauren Groff

  Freak, Kind, Control Freak

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• There is part of me that longs to have the back-to-the-earth life - make my own bread, grow my own wheat, just be really self-sufficient - but I am not, at the moment, willing to give up the luxury of modern life, and amazing schools for my kids, and things that I've come to rely on that are parts of society.

  Lauren Groff

  Giving Up, School, Kids

  "Bit And Peace: Lauren Groff’s Arcadia". Interview with Clare Stein, www.interviewmagazine.com. March 8, 2012.

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• I see ghosts everywhere, and that is partially a function of my being incredibly near-sighted and reading way too late into the night.

  Lauren Groff

  Reading, Night, Too Late

  "Bit And Peace: Lauren Groff’s Arcadia". Interview with Clare Stein, www.interviewmagazine.com. March 8, 2012.

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• We need the skeletons of other stories to understand our own, sometimes.

  Lauren Groff

  Skeletons, Needs, Stories

  "Bit And Peace: Lauren Groff’s Arcadia". Interview with Clare Stein, www.interviewmagazine.com. March 8, 2012.

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• Fiction is always a utopian task, in that there's an ideal you hold in your head as you write which inevitably fails in the moment of creation, in the insufficiency of words to convey meaning, or in the way the work is completed in the reader's head.

  Lauren Groff

  Writing, Tasks, Fiction

  Interview with Jason Skipper, therumpus.net. August 24, 2012.

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• Being a writer means I sit in a dark (and pretty dank) room off my garage for many hours a day, and in my wallowing moments I can feel as if I'm already on the outside of society, peering wistfully in.

  Lauren Groff

  Mean, Dark, Rooms

  Interview with Jason Skipper, therumpus.net. August 24, 2012.

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• I've never wanted to chuck my mortgage, drop the kids off at their grandparents' and run gloriously naked in fields of flax.

  Lauren Groff

  Running, Kids, Grandparent

  Interview with Jason Skipper, therumpus.net. August 24, 2012.

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• You had to pick up a landline to make sure your best friend wore a matching outfit to school. I do remember people talking more. Nostalgia is dangerous, though.

  Lauren Groff

  School, Talking, People

  Interview with Jason Skipper, therumpus.net. August 24, 2012.

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• I think that writers have natural canvases, and my canvas, even in short stories, often seems to be the scope of a life.

  Lauren Groff

  Thinking, Stories, Canvas

  Interview with Jason Skipper, therumpus.net. August 24, 2012.

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• Plays are just all sort of playful asides, and there's a great deal of reference here to Greek mythology, plays, and dramas. The idea of the chorus is really important in Greek drama and I loved the idea of including that.

  Lauren Groff

  Drama, Greek, Important

  Source: therumpus.net

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