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" 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
Related Quotes:
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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 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
" Cornell changed my life; getting in there was one of my pinnacle moments. "
Philipp Meyer
Moments
Changed
Life
" I try to begin writing as close to a dreamlike state as I can get. "
Philipp Meyer
Begin
Close
Get
" 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 should say that generally I'm a pretty happy person, but as soon as I'm done with a project, I'm usually not happy at all. I feel a little empty and strange. I begin to think about how I can get better, stretch more artistically and intellectually. My biggest worry is getting complacent. "
Philipp Meyer
Feel
Worry
Think
" When novels deal in abstractions, they generally go off the rails. "
Philipp Meyer
Go
Rails
Off
" 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 was a bit of a delinquent growing up, a very poor student - I nearly failed several grades before dropping out of high school and getting a G.E.D. But I still read a lot. Thrillers and war novels, mostly, along with the occasional literary novel from my parents' bookshelf. "
Philipp Meyer
Grades
War
School
" 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
" My parents have always been incredibly supportive. Even when I dropped out of high school, they said, 'We trust you, we believe in you.' "
Philipp Meyer
High School
Trust
You
" 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
" 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
" Nothing prepares you for making art except making art. You have to do it to get better. "
Philipp Meyer
Nothing
Art
Better
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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