Aleksandar Hemon Quotes About Writing

Quotes about: Writing

• There's no bad writing; you did something. I was operating inside language, and I did something. I'm not ashamed of it.

  Aleksandar Hemon

  Writing, Bad Writing, Language

  "The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Aleksandar Hemon". Interview with Rachel Dewoskin, therumpus.net. April 14, 2013.

• I write and read with the assumption that literature contains knowledge of human experience that is not available otherwise.

  Aleksandar Hemon

  Writing, Literature, Assumption

  Interview with Colum McCann, www.believermag.com. January, 2010.

• I'm not nervous if I think about something for nine years and then I don't write it. Even if it fades it doesn't concern me. It'll come back if it's worth it.

  Aleksandar Hemon

  Writing, Thinking, Years

  "There Is No Real Life". Interview with Brad Fox, www.guernicamag.com. March 15, 2013.

• I read everything I could find in English - Twain, Henry James, Hemingway, really everything. And then after a while I started writing shorter pieces in English, and one of them got published in a literary magazine and that's how it got started. After that, graduate school didn't seem very important.

  Aleksandar Hemon

  Writing, School, Important

• Rilke said that art can come only out of inner necessity. I write because I must. Or because I cannot not write.

  Aleksandar Hemon

  Art, Writing, Said

  Interview with Colum McCann, www.believermag.com. January, 2010.

• I don't believe in inspiration. I write when I can't avoid writing anymore.

  Aleksandar Hemon

  Believe, Inspiration, Writing

  "There Is No Real Life". Interview with Brad Fox, www.guernicamag.com. March 15, 2013.

• A particular piece of music attaches itself to the piece I'm writing, and there is nothing else I can listen to. Every day I return to the same space to write, the music providing both the walls and the pictures on the walls.

  Aleksandar Hemon

  Wall, Writing, Space

• For a fight to be productive, or at least relevant, writers should fight over different demands they put upon writing (as an individual, private act) and literature (a network of relations in which we are all involved).

  Aleksandar Hemon

  Writing, Fighting, Different

  Interview with Colum McCann, www.believermag.com. January, 2010.

• I end up writing something every day, since I develop six or seven things at the same time - soccer columns, this and that.

  Aleksandar Hemon

  Soccer, Writing, Six

  "There Is No Real Life". Interview with Brad Fox, www.guernicamag.com. March 15, 2013.

• I actually didn't listen to the Beatles song 'Nowhere Man' when I was writing my book of the same name. What I listened to a lot was 'Abbey Road.' Its disjointedness and its readiness to confuse only to delight were inspiring to me.

  Aleksandar Hemon

  Song, Book, Writing

• No reader owes me anything - I am owed nothing for my noble efforts, because my writing was always unconditional, always coming out of inner necessity.

  Aleksandar Hemon

  Writing, Effort, Noble

  Interview with Colum McCann, www.believermag.com. January, 2010.

• Sometimes I don't write at all. Someone once asked me, "What do you do when you're not writing?" And I said, "I idle."

  Aleksandar Hemon

  Writing, Sometimes, Said

  "There Is No Real Life". Interview with Brad Fox, www.guernicamag.com. March 15, 2013.

• I am a writer, which means I write stories, I write novels, and I would write poetry if I knew how to. I don't want to limit myself.

  Aleksandar Hemon

  Writing, Mean, Stories

• I hate traveling and being away from my family. But I like meeting my readers, as what I write is actualized in them. Those encounters are exhilarating to me.

  Aleksandar Hemon

  Hate, Writing, Encounters

  Interview with Colum McCann, www.believermag.com. January, 2010.

• To write has to be related to a drive inside.

  Aleksandar Hemon

  Writing, Related

  "There Is No Real Life". Interview with Brad Fox, www.guernicamag.com. March 15, 2013.

• I cannot live or write without music. It stimulates the normally dormant parts of my brain that come in handy when constructing fiction.

  Aleksandar Hemon

  Writing, Brain, Fiction

• Writing is a mode of agency in the world that is different from mere employment. There has to be some sort of ethical or moral drive, even if you are unaware of it.

  Aleksandar Hemon

  Writing, Agency, World

  "The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Aleksandar Hemon". Interview with Rachel Dewoskin, therumpus.net. April 14, 2013.

• The beauty of literature - also its limit - is that it is inescapably personal, even if you're writing science fiction.

  Aleksandar Hemon

  Writing, Fiction, Literature

  "There Is No Real Life". Interview with Brad Fox, www.guernicamag.com. March 15, 2013.

• I long for, not a writer's retreat - I can write in any situation - but a reader's retreat.

  Aleksandar Hemon

  Writing, Long, Retreat

• I want to make money, and I would like to have a lot of money, but I still believe that the only reason to write is that somehow it will make something or somebody better.

  Aleksandar Hemon

  Believe, Writing, Want

  "There Is No Real Life". Interview with Brad Fox, www.guernicamag.com. March 15, 2013.

• I want a book to contain a world - indeed the world. Writing is my main means of engagement with the world and I want the scars of that engagement to be left in the language.

  Aleksandar Hemon

  Book, Writing, Mean

  Interview with Colum McCann, www.believermag.com. January, 2010.

• There are many things I think about that never get to the point of becoming serious. In other words, I try to talk myself out of writing, sometimes for many years, and when I run out of arguments, I write.

  Aleksandar Hemon

  Running, Writing, Thinking

  "There Is No Real Life". Interview with Brad Fox, www.guernicamag.com. March 15, 2013.

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin