Lily King Quotes

Quotes about:

• You don't realize how language actually interferes with communication until you don't have it, how it gets in the way like an overdominant sense. You have to pay much more attention to everything else when you can't understand the words. Once comprehension comes, so much else falls away. You then rely on their words, and words aren't always the most reliable thing.

  Lily King

  Fall, Communication, Attention

  Lily King (2014). “Euphoria”, p.62, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  45 Copy quote

• Ever since high school I've been writing in a spiral notebook, in pencil. Everything looks too polished on a computer when you start writing, and I can't really see it. I feel like the words are much more naked in pencil, on a notebook. I feel that my brain works differently, and words come out differently, if I have a pencil in my hand, rather than if I have a keyboard. I tend to add more in the margins. I tend to elongate the sentences as I'm writing and editing, and there is just something about the feeling of writing longhand that I really love.

  Lily King

  Notebook, Writing, School

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  5 Copy quote

• I always had this put-together family, and I always identified as the outsider. And that's a position where I feel most comfortable, and yet I feel an incredible longing to belong. That is really a strong feeling from my childhood - a desire to be part of a group.

  Lily King

  Strong, Childhood, Feelings

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• Perhaps all science is merely self-investigation.

  Lily King

  Self, Investigation

  Lily King (2014). “Euphoria”, p.65, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  4 Copy quote

• It also signals to me, when I pick up a pencil, that this is a rough draft. This is not going anywhere, and no one's going to see it. You have permission to make all the mistakes you want. It signals freedom to me, and it signals mistakes.

  Lily King

  Mistake, Rough Drafts, Want

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  7 Copy quote

• Anthropological fieldwork is so much like writing a novel. Granted, you don't have the physical disruption and disorientation, but writing a novel is like entering a new culture. You don't know what the hell is going on. And every day you feel like you have nothing, you're going nowhere. Or you feel that first it's going somewhere, but then you get into that horrible middle part.

  Lily King

  Writing, Culture, Hell

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• Was it possible in any relationship to not disappoint, to do anything more than only briefly rekindle the initial fatal illusion?

  Lily King

  Illusion, Disappoint, Initials

  Lily King (2007). “The English Teacher”, p.105, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  4 Copy quote

• I'm always interested in a claustrophobic situation where people might be powerless to do things. My first three novels were all about families. Things that happen in a house within a family, because you're a child or because you want to keep the family together, you suffer things you might not have had to suffer if you weren't in that situation.

  Lily King

  Children, People, House

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• When I pick up a pencil, that this is a rough draft. This is not going anywhere, and no one's going to see it. You have permission to make all the mistakes you want. It signals freedom to me, and it signals mistakes. Then when I put it on the computer, a different part of my brain kicks in and I really evaluate every single word and sentence and make decisions. I like that step of polishing while I'm rewriting the entire thing, not just cutting and pasting. Really putting in every word and making a decision: is this something I can stand by?

  Lily King

  Mistake, Cutting, Decision

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• I loved languages, and loved learning languages. It was fantastic. But I was alone there. I remember that time as a real Virginia Woolf time. More than any language it was her language that influenced me.

  Lily King

  Real, Virginia, Language

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• When I finished graduate school, the first George Bush was president, and I really wanted to get out of the country. We'd just gone through the first Gulf War.

  Lily King

  Country, War, School

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• I've also done things that put me in odd situations.

  Lily King

  Done, Odd, Situation

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• Anthropologists are great at novelistic observations. I would be thrilled if this novel would encourage anthropologists to write what they see in fictional form.

  Lily King

  Writing, Would Be, Form

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• Ever since high school I've been writing in a spiral notebook, in pencil. Everything looks too polished on a computer when you start writing, and I can't really see it. I feel like the words are much more naked in pencil, on a notebook.

  Lily King

  Notebook, Writing, School

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• There are certain tribes in the middle Sepik that eat raw bat. A certain kind of raw bat is a delicacy.

  Lily King

  Bats, Delicacy, Tribes

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• Anthropology is separated from mass reading, and that is something that bothered Margaret Mead. She always said that she wrote everything for her grandmother, in a way that her grandmother could understand what she was saying.

  Lily King

  Reading, Grandmother, Way

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• Anthropological fieldwork is so much like writing a novel. You don't know what the hell is going on.

  Lily King

  Writing, Hell, Novel

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  14 Copy quote

• I'm very interested in the way people interact emotionally.

  Lily King

  People, Way

  4 Copy quote

• I have three stepfamilies as well as my family of origin. I've had to adjust to them and also go back and forth among them. I became an observer of human nature because when you are in those situations you have to be.

  Lily King

  Three, Human Nature, My Family

  4 Copy quote

• I've always thought of writing as sort of active communication.

  Lily King

  Communication, Writing, Active

  4 Copy quote

• I'm always interested in a claustrophobic situation where people might be powerless to do things.

  Lily King

  People, Might, Situation

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• Every fictional thing I wrote gave me strength to write another and another. By the end I wasn't remaining true to anything but the story I wanted to tell.

  Lily King

  Writing, Stories, Ends

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• To go back to my childhood, I experienced lots of different family cultures, all the while feeling like none of them were mine.

  Lily King

  Childhood, Feelings, Different

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• I think of companies like Nokia having anthropologists who study how people use cell phones, who do that kind of commercial and marketing work, selling out to corporations. I wonder if that has something to do with the image of the more innocent anthropologist, now gone.

  Lily King

  Thinking, Phones, Cells

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  6 Copy quote

• Usually, the creating of the book happens while I'm writing the book. I start with Chapter One, with a few ideas and a handful of characters, and the book grows from there.

  Lily King

  Book, Writing, Character

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

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