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" I'm not an investigative journalist; I don't track crime or police blotters. "
Kathryn Harrison
Track
Journalist
Police
Related Quotes:
" I think in terms of the parents that I had, I sort of drew a bad hand, or bad karma; who knows? And I did have a family that was complicated, with some quite eccentric members. So there was a lot of grist there. "
Kathryn Harrison
Family
Bad
Hand
" I love any book that makes my family seem almost normal. "
Kathryn Harrison
Normal
Love
Family
" I got history solidly under my belt, reading Russian history and biographies. I couldn't change the facts. I could only play with how the people might have responded to the facts of their lives. "
Kathryn Harrison
History
People
Change
" Shorter work - personal essays and book reviews - allow me to take a break from working on a book, which is good for the book and for its author. "
Kathryn Harrison
Work
Personal
Book
" I'll never have so compelling a figure within my embrace as Joan of Arc; there will never be a book whose last chapter is so very hard to get right. "
Kathryn Harrison
Right
Never
Chapter
" Writing is how I stay sane. It's completely necessary. "
Kathryn Harrison
Writing
Sane
How
" A lot of writers dwell on their relationships with their mothers, but only a few are worth reading. "
Kathryn Harrison
Dwell
Relationships
Worth
" It is my conviction that secrets are more costly in the long run than honesty. "
Kathryn Harrison
More
Than
Secrets
" How many artists subscribe to the notion that creative success depends on input from the fickle muse or her modern avatar, mental illness? Probably very few. "
Kathryn Harrison
Success
Creative
Mental Illness
" How much of a book review is about the reviewer? Sometimes it's mostly about the reviewer! "
Kathryn Harrison
Much
Book
Sometimes
" I admire cool renderings of hot topics. "
Kathryn Harrison
Topics
Hot
Cool
" Like all holy figures whose earthly existence separates them from the broad mass of humanity, a saint is a story, and Joan of Arc's is like no other. "
Kathryn Harrison
Other
Story
Like
" I've always been interested in the intersection between our rational and our unconscious lives. "
Kathryn Harrison
Our
Rational
Interested
" I don't care what people think about me. I care what people think about my work. As a young woman, I was so eager to please that I served others' happiness and even their values before my own. "
Kathryn Harrison
Woman
People
Happiness
" I can't work out much about myself or what I see in the world around me unless I do it through writing. "
Kathryn Harrison
Writing
Me
Myself
" In terms of going back and forth between fiction and nonfiction - in which I'll include memoir, biography, and true crime - is that one relieves the other. "
Kathryn Harrison
Going
Back
Biography
" For years, the place I really lived - the world I watched, the one I thought and wrote about - was 15th-century France. "
Kathryn Harrison
World
Years
Lived
" By the time Joan of Arc was 16 and had proclaimed herself the virgin warrior sent by God to deliver France from her enemies, the English, she had been receiving the counsel of angels for three years. "
Kathryn Harrison
She
Time
Warrior
" 'Madame Bovary' advanced slowly, as slowly as it would have to have, given an author who held himself accountable to each word, that it be the right word, of which there could be only one. "
Kathryn Harrison
Right
Slowly
Word
" I have at last admitted that not only was I angry with my mother, but, in fact, I wanted to destroy her as a child. And I was so concerned to be a woman who was different from my mother that I had this vast architecture of rules. "
Kathryn Harrison
Child
Her
Mother
" The power of 'Madame Bovary' stems from Flaubert's determination to render each object of his scrutiny exactly as it looks, or sounds or smells or feels or tastes. "
Kathryn Harrison
Power
Determination
Object
" I was the good girl who never needed disciplining, who made straight A's. I applied and was accepted to Stanford University. "
Kathryn Harrison
University
Good
Good Girl
" I am perfectly capable of writing things about myself that one doesn't discuss in polite company, but I was raised by people who said you don't discuss politics, you don't discuss religion, and you certainly don't discuss people's sex lives. "
Kathryn Harrison
Myself
People
I Am
" Having grown up so familiar with creating a pleasing facade, I now end up compelled to reveal things inside and say, 'Okay, now you really see me. Do you still love me?' And then it's never enough; it always has to be total self-revelation. "
Kathryn Harrison
Love
You
Me
" One of the things I find exciting about Joan of Arc is how clearly the story of her life reveals the creation of myth, a process in which every one of us is involved - every one of us who tells stories and all those who listen, each informing the other. "
Kathryn Harrison
Process
Listen
Life
" I wrote 'The Kiss' 12 hours a day for six months. "
Kathryn Harrison
Hours
Wrote
Day
" I reread 'Nicholas and Alexandra' in my early twenties, and I never forgot the story. "
Kathryn Harrison
Early
Twenties
Story
" Looking at the Obamas, they have a lot to manage with their children and having Michelle go out and have everybody comment on what she was wearing, what it means. I think you have to create a pretty large private world to live in. "
Kathryn Harrison
Looking
Children
Live
" Because the kind of nonfiction I write has a plot, the events and transactions that make up a life, nonfiction offers me a break from plotting. "
Kathryn Harrison
Me
Life
Kind
" Rasputin's daughter understands the revolution. She would have been an outsider, a spectator in the royal family and to the revolution. "
Kathryn Harrison
Revolution
Royal
She