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" All the books I was reading as a teenager were about individuals having adventures. So I thought that was what writers were supposed to do: to go out on the road. "
Patrick deWitt
Road
Thought
Go
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" I come by writing dialogue fairly naturally, I've got a chatty family; I'm a bit of a voyeur, and if I'm ever in a public place, I automatically find myself listening. "
Patrick deWitt
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Writing
Find
" I've always felt so fortunate to have writing to turn to every day. I'm obsessed with it. "
Patrick deWitt
Always
Day
Writing
" If you're not riddled with doubt, you've probably done something wrong. "
Patrick deWitt
Something
Doubt
Done
" A lot of my favourite books - I should say, not much happens in the books! It's much more about the points of view of the author more than anything else. "
Patrick deWitt
More
View
Books
" At the age of seventeen, I decided I would spend my life writing fiction. I didn't know what this entailed, exactly - a room, I supposed. A room and books and paper and solitude. "
Patrick deWitt
Solitude
My Life
Life
" Often the starting point for characters, for me, is finding a little, most minor detail, and I'll go from there. "
Patrick deWitt
Me
Point
Starting
" I'm either enjoying myself or I'm not. And if I'm not enjoying myself, something's gone terribly wrong. "
Patrick deWitt
Something
Wrong
Myself
" I'm never doing anything by rote. I'm only on thin ice, and I think that that's a good place to be. I feel like when you push yourself like that, the rewards can be pretty great. "
Patrick deWitt
Yourself
Good
Great
" The initial spark, your affection for the characters, all those things can disappear. It's a perilous thing. "
Patrick deWitt
Affection
Things
Spark
" I haven't read hardly any Westerns, to tell you the truth. "
Patrick deWitt
Hardly
You
Westerns
" All of my close friends are emotional train wrecks. This is what makes our lives interesting - constantly doubting ourselves, worrying, wondering if we've made a mistake. Could we have done better? Are we good people? Are we bad people? "
Patrick deWitt
Good People
Mistake
People
" Especially if you're endeavouring daily to write your own books, you read with a degree of - well, it's hard to forget you're a writer when you're reading. "
Patrick deWitt
Hard
You
Daily
" I am increasingly unimpressed by works of art that require a college degree to understand. I think that art should be for everyone. And people should be moved by it. "
Patrick deWitt
Think
Art
College
" The hardest thing in the world for a writer is to amass a readership. So many good books come out, and so many good books disappear. "
Patrick deWitt
Good
Books
World
" I was reading my son some fables; it made for good nighttime reading. These stories were very vivid and very strange and occasionally bizarrely violent. It was a very free landscape. "
Patrick deWitt
Landscape
Free
Good
" I don't know that I'd call myself an optimist. "
Patrick deWitt
Optimist
Call
Know
" Love is dangerous; it's not something to be trifled with. As good as it feels on the way in, it feels that much worse on the way out. "
Patrick deWitt
Way
Love
Dangerous
" After school, I got a job in a shop in Hollywood and shared an apartment with a friend. I promptly lost my job and got evicted from my apartment, and that happened several times. "
Patrick deWitt
Lost
Hollywood
Job
" Looking around, I saw so many unhappy adults, people who loathed their jobs, and I didn't want to be one of them. "
Patrick deWitt
Looking
People
Jobs
" A lot of authors, judging by their list, will put anything out that they finish... That's the worst model I've heard of in my life. It's just idiotic. Why wouldn't you just wait for the good ones? "
Patrick deWitt
You
Wait
My Life
" Humorous writing is often thought of as substandard in comparison to work with a more dramatic or tragic intent. I don't know what to say to this except that I disagree wholeheartedly. "
Patrick deWitt
Work
More
Know
" My first book didn't even have a Canadian publisher. And that upset me, because I so wanted a readership up there. "
Patrick deWitt
Book
Me
Upset
" Some deeper part of me wants to write comical dialogue; I'd be foolish to not follow that impulse. Now I recognize that if there's energy to a section of work, you go where the energy is. It's a living thing, and you just follow it. "
Patrick deWitt
Work
Me
Energy
" Unfunny people should be locked up, the key tossed into a smelter. "
Patrick deWitt
Key
People
Should
" My instinct is to write under the cloak of an opaque historical setting. "
Patrick deWitt
Historical
Write
Setting
" Working in a bar was a horrific idea for me. "
Patrick deWitt
Horrific
Working
Me
" My interest in words and literature is always changing. And every day of work is different, and it doesn't feel laborious in the way that, say, washing dishes did. I'm quite happy to be doing what I'm doing, and I feel very lucky. "
Patrick deWitt
Words
Work
Day
" Bernie Madoff is probably more nuanced then I'm giving him credit for, but I just couldn't get under his skin. "
Patrick deWitt
Him
Giving
Credit
" The idea is this: It's important to upset one's work habits, to topple the cart for each project. "
Patrick deWitt
Upset
Project
Important
" If I were to continue to work in an established mode, it stands to reason the work would be limited by this - that it would never surpass the prior work in quality. "
Patrick deWitt
Reason
Continue
Never