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" A mob is not, as is so often said, mindless. A mob is single-minded. "
Teju Cole
Mob
Said
Mindless
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" I am a novelist. I traffic in subtleties, and my goal in writing a novel is to leave the reader not knowing what to think. A good novel shouldn't have a point. "
Teju Cole
I Am
Good
Not Knowing
" Always say 'no pun intended' to draw attention to the intended pun. "
Teju Cole
Pun
Intended
Attention
" We have for too long been taught that the sight of a man speaking to himself is a sign of eccentricity or madness; we are no longer at all habituated to our own voices, except in conversation or from within the safety of a shouting crowd. "
Teju Cole
Madness
Long
Conversation
" Lyrical poetry is not a big part of most people's lives. Twitter now becomes an interesting way of getting cared for language into people's space. Because there is something deep inside of us that responds to cared for language, whether it's literary, poetry, or really good lyrics in a song. "
Teju Cole
Space
Deep
Good
" In a Transtromer poem, you inhabit space differently; a body becomes a thing, a mind floats, things have lives, and even non-things, even concepts, are alive. "
Teju Cole
Mind
Space
Alive
" I'm not trying to be a poet on Twitter; I'm trying to be aware of the fact that a very simple sentence, well written, can have a very moving effect without that person knowing why. There's a deep genetic part of you that somehow, even without your permission, recognizes good language when it arrives. "
Teju Cole
Good
Simple
Moving
" I was in New York City on 9/11. Grief remains from that awful day, but not only grief. There is fear, too, a fear informed by the knowledge that whatever my worst nightmare is, there is someone out there embittered enough to carry it out. "
Teju Cole
Fear
Day
New York
" We don't experience our lives as plots. If I asked you to tell me what your last week was like, you're not really gonna give me plot. You're gonna give me sort of linked narrative. And I wanted to see how do we bring that into fiction without losing the reader. "
Teju Cole
Me
Experience
Losing
" One of the difficulties of photography is that it is much better at being explicit than at being reticent. "
Teju Cole
Photography
Better
Much
" On many days my primary artistic struggle is, in fact, photography because it is harder to do good work with that. I see myself as an observer of the world who has a strong drive to testify, which I can do because I have the privilege of living in New York with enough food to eat and shelter. "
Teju Cole
Good
Food
Myself
" One of the chief characteristics of a mob is its quickness. It is sudden. It pounces. "
Teju Cole
Mob
Characteristics
Chief
" There are many people who know nothing of a world in which we take the reality of the 'other' seriously. I'm running on that platform: other people in other countries are really, really real, and there has to be a way of presenting their reality that is not condescending to them or about our psycho-social needs. "
Teju Cole
World
Know
People
" Never say 'I went to Harvard.' Say 'I schooled in the Boston area.' "
Teju Cole
Boston
Never
Say
" When I write, I have a sort of secret kinship of readers in all countries who don't know each other but each of whom, when they read my book, feels at home in it. So I write for those readers. It's almost a sense of writing for a specific person, but it's a specific person who I don't know. "
Teju Cole
Person
Writing
Sense
" Barack Obama is an elegant and literate man with a cosmopolitan sense of the world. He is widely read in philosophy, literature, and history - as befits a former law professor - and he has shown time and again a surprising interest in contemporary fiction. "
Teju Cole
Sense
Man
History
" In countries with a properly functioning legal system, the mob continues to exist, but it is rarely called upon to mete out capital punishment. The right to take human life belongs to the state. Not so in societies where weak courts and poor law enforcement are combined with intractable structural injustices. "
Teju Cole
Mob
Legal
Law
" The most common thing I find is very brilliant, acute, young people who want to become writers but they are not writing. You know, they really badly want to write a book but they are not writing it. The only advice I can give them is to just write it, get to the end of it. And, you know, if it's not good enough, write another one. "
Teju Cole
Book
End
Good
" Oh, I love labels, as long as they are numerous. I'm an American writer. I'm a Nigerian writer. I'm a Nigerian American writer. I'm an African writer. I'm a Yoruba writer. I'm an African American writer. "
Teju Cole
Love
Labels
American
" When I've had enough of words, I go out into the city for a long walk; sometimes I'll go out walking for several miles. And I'll just take photographs and hope for something striking or unusual to happen that I can organize into a picture frame. "
Teju Cole
City
Hope
Long
" Punitive murder by the police and by vigilantes has existed in all societies at some point, and probably still exists in most. "
Teju Cole
Some
Still
Point
" Probably the biggest temptation that young writers face is to be entertaining, to show your bag of tricks and do a bit of tap dancing. I read a lot of things, and I keep seeing this brocade of voice where someone is trying to be too pally with you or ingratiating on the page. "
Teju Cole
Bag
You
Voice
" In 'Open City,' there is a passage that any reader of Joyce will immediately recognise as a very close, formal analogue of one the stories in 'Dubliners.' That is because a novel is also a literary conversation. "
Teju Cole
Conversation
Stories
Open
" Religion is close to theatre; much of its power comes from the effects of staging and framing. "
Teju Cole
Power
Religion
Much
" There was a feeling during the years of George W. Bush's presidency that his gracelessness as well as his appetite for war were linked to his impatience with complexity. He acted 'from the gut,' and was economical with the truth until it disappeared. "
Teju Cole
Years
Feeling
Complexity
" To read Transtromer - the best times are at night, in silence, and alone - is to surrender to the far-fetched. It is to climb out of bed and listen to what the house is saying, and to how the wind outside responds. Each of his readers reads him as a personal secret. "
Teju Cole
Climb
Wind
Silence
" I'd like to meet fewer people who say 'Oh, I want to write a book, here are 10 pages I've written,' and more 'Oh, I want to write a book, here are 300 pages I've written.' "
Teju Cole
More
Meet
Book
" I probably get a deeper satisfaction of having taken a very good photograph than of having written something very good, a very good story. Maybe it's because the element of magic is so present in a good photograph - luck and magic, but also hard work and being ready and all that. "
Teju Cole
Luck
Work
Story
" Old-school hip hop, i.e., whatever was popular when you were nineteen, is great. Everything since then is intolerable. "
Teju Cole
Everything
Great
Then
" I am on Vine. It's another early-adopter kind of thing. I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to do with it. What's interesting about it is that everybody knows these amazing restrictions we've put on it: I have to use my iPhone, I can only use one continuous take, I cannot edit afterwards, I cannot put sound afterwards. "
Teju Cole
I Am
Interesting
Kind
" Because I'm an art historian, I have some experience of writing that comes out of close attention. That's what really art history is. You're looking at something very closely, and you try to write in a meticulous way about it. "
Teju Cole
Writing
Art
Experience