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" After I finished college, I got a job on Wall Street as a derivatives trader, but after a couple years of it, I was calling in sick in order to work on my novel. "
Philipp Meyer
Sick
Street
Job
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" Texas was mostly short-grass and tall-grass prairie when modern Europeans arrived here. It really was a land of milk and honey. But when they brought all these cattle onto these relatively small bits of land, and the cattle were allowed to graze freely, they essentially destroyed the prairie. "
Philipp Meyer
Honey
Here
Texas
" There's a reason that all societies and cultures and small bands of humans engage in myth-making. Fundamentally, it is to help us understand ourselves. "
Philipp Meyer
Understand
Us
Help
" 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
Woods
Alone
Book
" Life throws up enough road blocks to keep you from writing; you can't be adding to them yourself by saying you can only write in one specific place. I'm in New York half the time and Texas half the time, and I work wherever - in my computer bag I have some foam ear plugs that I can put in. "
Philipp Meyer
Work
New York
Life
" When you hold things back, when you don't commit completely to your ideas and trust completely in your own instincts, you are guaranteeing your own failure - even if you end up having commercial success. "
Philipp Meyer
Success
Trust
You
" I wanted to think about our creation myth; you know, what is the fundamental story that defines America. And it certainly is the West. "
Philipp Meyer
You
America
Know
" I couldn't understand what was important about school. Dropping out was the first adult decision I made. If I ever have kids, I would hate for them to drop out. But I wasn't a rebel. I never cared to be against school. I just wanted to do what I wanted to do. "
Philipp Meyer
School
Rebel
Important
" At Cornell University, it was well known that after five years on Wall Street, you could expect to be making half a million a year in salary and bonus; after 10 years, you could expect a million or more. I had 60 grand of university debt, and my parents had no retirement. I needed that money. "
Philipp Meyer
You
Street
Retirement
" When you take the fact that you're loved for granted, it frees your mind to go after every other thing there is. "
Philipp Meyer
Loved
Go
Your
" 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
Trauma
Bicycle
School
" Your job as a writer is to find storylines, narrative structures, and characters to show the things that you believe rather than saying them or telling them. "
Philipp Meyer
Believe
Job
Find
" When people grow up in atmospheres of violence or atmospheres of poverty, they don't normally use hi-falutin' language to describe those things. They would describe some brutal event the same way we would describe getting a taxi or missing the bus. "
Philipp Meyer
Violence
Way
Language
" I'm interested in getting deep into a person's consciousness and doing so in ways in which the narrator is secondary to the character's own thoughts. "
Philipp Meyer
Thoughts
Doing
Deep
" My ideal is to write most of the day, then go running, find friends and socialise all evening; my mind recharges with human contact. "
Philipp Meyer
Find
Mind
Human
" Since I quit banking, all my major life decisions, when they could, have revolved around writing. "
Philipp Meyer
Quit
Life
Decisions
" When I dropped out of high school at age 16, I didn't know I was going to become a writer - I just knew I'd never been happy in school, and I had this strong suspicion I'd be happy doing other things. "
Philipp Meyer
Strong
Age
Be Happy
" When we think of the myth of the settling of the West, this is our creation myth. But because we think of it as mythology, not as real people interacting with other real people, we ignore the cost of human lives and blood. "
Philipp Meyer
Ignore
People
Think
" I didn't fit the typical profile of a trader. I was an English major working on a novel at night. Most everyone else was a maths or economics major; most everyone else had relatives or family in banking. "
Philipp Meyer
Family
Night
Working
" Your mind burns a lot of calories. Writing can feel like a physical workout. "
Philipp Meyer
Workout
Mind
Writing
" 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
Years
American
Work
" Whenever I'm interested in something, I make sure I'm really good at it. "
Philipp Meyer
Sure
Good
Make
" If you're always thinking about someone else's work, about the tradition you're working in, how can you possibly make anything good? "
Philipp Meyer
Good
You
Work
" I like mechanical things; my first book was a mechanics guide - that was what my parents couldn't pry away from me; that was the blanket. "
Philipp Meyer
Like
Me
Parents
" If you've grown up with guns, the thought that someone might take them away makes your stomach churn. They make you feel safe. If you didn't grow up with guns, if you don't know how to use them, then the thought that someone else has them makes your stomach churn. "
Philipp Meyer
You
Feel
Grow
" You have to believe in yourself and only trust your own vision and instincts. If I'd 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
Work
Vision
Believe In Yourself
" I just assume that I'll fail at something for several years - that I'll try my hardest and still fail for several years. With writing, that turned out to be wrong. I tried my hardest and failed for about fifteen years. "
Philipp Meyer
Fail
Writing
Years
" I try to begin writing as close to a dreamlike state as I can get. "
Philipp Meyer
Begin
Close
Get
" What art and books do at their best is investigate why we are the way we are. "
Philipp Meyer
Investigate
Why
Way
" Nothing prepares you for making art except making art. You have to do it to get better. "
Philipp Meyer
Nothing
Art
Better
" You don't make a decision about being a writer. There was a point, aged 21, when it became clear that this is who I am. The choice is how good you are going to be at it and how hard you are going to work. "
Philipp Meyer
Decision
Choice
I Am