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" Sadness was something I was thinking about in my life outside of writing, so it wormed itself into whatever I wrote. "
Elizabeth McCracken
Sadness
Life
Wrote
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" When I tell people there are three stories in 'Thunderstruck' that were from the same wrecked novel, they want to guess what they are. Nobody has. There are no characters or timelines in common. They're structured very differently. A good novel wouldn't have pulled apart so easily. "
Elizabeth McCracken
People
Nobody
Good
" I have a memory of my fourth-grade self wanting to be the first woman president of the United States, but I think that has a lot more to do with my love of world records and reference books than a love of serving my country. "
Elizabeth McCracken
Self
Think
World
" I've always been absolutely appalling about the future, but I sort of think that was my childhood religion. We were future deniers. You did your best in the present, which was all around you. "
Elizabeth McCracken
Childhood
Best
Think
" I feel like I don't understand time in novels, really. I bumble forward, is all. "
Elizabeth McCracken
Like
Forward
Feel
" I wanted to acknowledge that life goes on but that death goes on, too. A person who is dead is a long, long story. "
Elizabeth McCracken
Dead
Story
Person
" In 'Property,' none of the characters are based on any real people, but the house is very much the house that I moved into in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. "
Elizabeth McCracken
Real
House
Much
" Acknowledgment of grief - well, it makes feeling the grief easier, not harder. "
Elizabeth McCracken
Grief
Makes
Well
" The thing that most interests me about writing - there are lots of things, but the thing I can't do without - is the hit of happiness a lovely sentence delivers. "
Elizabeth McCracken
Writing
Without
Me
" I own an e-reader, but I use it almost exclusively to read things that aren't books - student theses, unbound galleys. "
Elizabeth McCracken
Use
Almost
Books
" My mother's family didn't speak much about Europe: My mother was born in 1935, and her new-world parents were the sort who didn't want to worry their children about the war. "
Elizabeth McCracken
Parents
Family
Children
" Short fiction is like low relief. And if your story has no humor in it, then you're trying to look at something in the pitch dark. With the light of humor, it throws what you're writing into relief so that you can actually see it. "
Elizabeth McCracken
Writing
Story
Short
" I used to be a writer with superstitions worthy of a professional baseball player: I needed a certain desk chair and a certain armchair and a certain desk arrangement, and I could only get really useful work done between 8 P.M. and 3 A.M. Then I started to move, and I couldn't bring my chairs with me. "
Elizabeth McCracken
Done
Baseball
Work
" You believe in God or statistics or the way your narrative differs from other people. "
Elizabeth McCracken
You
Statistics
People
" It's hard to know which made me more aware of the impossibility of protecting children - having a child die or having had two live. "
Elizabeth McCracken
Child
Me
Know
" I like seeing my physical progress through a volume, particularly if it's a big book. "
Elizabeth McCracken
Seeing
Through
Like
" When it comes to other people's writing, my older influences are more powerful than more recent ones, partially because I'm now more worried that I'll suddenly accidentally steal something from another writer. "
Elizabeth McCracken
People
Powerful
Writing
" I sort of don't believe in closure. In the sense that it doesn't make me feel better to think that something is over. "
Elizabeth McCracken
Feel
Over
Better
" Remember that a woman who has given birth to a dead child has given birth and is recovering physically, too. Don't be afraid of grieving parents. "
Elizabeth McCracken
Remember
Birth
Child
" New Orleans is still the place where you find out that you have a doppelganger and feel lucky - but somehow unsurprised - to learn that his name is Mad Bottom. "
Elizabeth McCracken
Learn
Place
Name
" You write the way you think about the world. My motto in times of trouble - and I'm speaking of life, not writing - is 'no humor too black.' "
Elizabeth McCracken
Humor
Writing
You
" An iron lung looks like an enormous metal coffin or a 19th-century rocket ship: only its occupant's head is left outside, a tight seal around the neck. "
Elizabeth McCracken
Head
Ship
Rocket
" It's an amazing thing to watch a lizard fold a moth into its mouth, like a sword swallower who specialises in umbrellas. "
Elizabeth McCracken
Like
Mouth
Sword
" Ordinarily, I'd claim that I'd never write directly about my children, but the opening conversation of 'Peter Elroy' is a verbatim conversation that my children had that I just loved: morbid, funny, passionate, and obsessed with the truth of things - all natural qualities of children that I'd like my work to contain. "
Elizabeth McCracken
Loved
Children
Funny
" I always want the last line to be really good, which may sound silly, but I want it to be a last pleasing line. "
Elizabeth McCracken
Sound
Always
Good
" For about half an hour in mid-1992, I knew as much as any layperson about the pleasures of remote access of other people's computers. "
Elizabeth McCracken
Access
Computers
Half
" The walls of the Franciscan Church of the Assumption of the Holy Virgin Mary were ruined stucco chipping away from the brick underneath, with ghostly frescoes, concrete-filled niches, and one complete, vivid crucifix painted over the altar. "
Elizabeth McCracken
Brick
Walls
Over
" At my first library job, I worked with a woman named Sheila Brownstein, who was The Reader's Advisor. She was a short, bosomy Englishwoman who accosted people at the shelves and asked if they wanted advice on what to read, and if the answer was yes, she asked what writers they already loved and then suggested somebody new. "
Elizabeth McCracken
Library
Job
Woman
" There are two MFA programs here at the University of Texas, and I read on the jury of both of them. And it's amazing to me how many really talented young writers seem to fear humor. "
Elizabeth McCracken
Young
Amazing
Fear
" I'm a higgledy-piggledy person in every way. On days that I work, I work for eight hours in a row, with my internet access entirely turned off, locked in my office. "
Elizabeth McCracken
Person
Work
Office
" I have been the person who tries to keep conversation light while talking to someone whose heart has been smashed. "
Elizabeth McCracken
Light
Who
Talking