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" 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
Related Quotes:
" I thought that I would have a huge literary novel coming out when I was, like, 29. I quit my banking job, and I was halfway through my second novel - and I will never publish it, because it's very mediocre. "
Philipp Meyer
Will
Halfway
Job
" Since I quit banking, all my major life decisions, when they could, have revolved around writing. "
Philipp Meyer
Quit
Life
Decisions
" Whenever I'm interested in something, I make sure I'm really good at it. "
Philipp Meyer
Sure
Good
Make
" 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
" 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
" Nothing prepares you for making art except making art. You have to do it to get better. "
Philipp Meyer
Nothing
Art
Better
" 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 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
" 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
" Fundamentally, all art is about human beings. You're always showing larger moral questions through the smaller moral, philosophical, or political choices through one character in the book. "
Philipp Meyer
Book
Political
Choices
" Each time a high-wage job is lost, a family is turned upside down. And that affects the communities where they live. "
Philipp Meyer
Time
Live
Family
" When you look at 'Grapes of Wrath,' the weakest moments are those in which Steinbeck is spouting a political idea directly at the reader. The book's real power comes from its slower, broader movement. "
Philipp Meyer
Political
Power
Moments
" I don't think you can be taught how to make art. You can be coached, but on a fundamental level you have to figure it out for yourself. You have to learn how your own mind works, figure out your own relationship to the art; you essentially have to invent it completely for yourself. "
Philipp Meyer
Mind
Think
Relationship
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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 know much about Texas when I moved there for graduate school. In my first or second semester, I took a class in life and literature of the Southwest, and that's where I first heard about these events along the border in 1915-1918, what Anglos called the Bandit Wars. "
Philipp Meyer
Texas
School
Literature
" 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
" 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
" Your mind burns a lot of calories. Writing can feel like a physical workout. "
Philipp Meyer
Workout
Mind
Writing
" 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
" Cornell changed my life; getting in there was one of my pinnacle moments. "
Philipp Meyer
Moments
Changed
Life
" 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
" 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
" I'd grown up in a working class neighborhood in Baltimore, a place hard hit by the offshoring of numerous heavy industries - steel, textile, shipbuilding. "
Philipp Meyer
Steel
Working
Up
" 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
" 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
" 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
" We moved to Baltimore, Maryland, in 1979, when I was five. The funny thing is that, even though Baltimore had one of the top murder rates in the country in those days, I grew up hearing about how dangerous New York was. "
Philipp Meyer
Funny
New York
Country