Jess Walter Quotes

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Jess Walter

Profession : Author

Birth : July 20, 1965

I doubt the terrorists saw 9/11 as a teaching opportunity. And we're not really a culture geared to anything as humble as 'learning.' But I was disappointed in how quickly everyone wanted to get back to normal. It was as if we watched terrorism on TV for a while, then got bored and turned back to 'American Idol.'

Jess Walter

I think celebrity has become almost normalized. I feel like we all live our lives in a pale imitation of celebrity. With Facebook, we choose a photo that is not too good a photo - we're more arch than that. We're our own celebrity publicists. We understand it so innately.

Jess Walter

There are some people whose Twitter feeds are works of art. They intuitively understand how much of themselves to put out there.

Jess Walter

I remember the first time I went to Europe, I had someone take a picture of me there, so I could really see myself there. There's a sense of being outside yourself, and I think celebrity allows us that too, to be outside ourselves.

Jess Walter

My poetry is the most disappointing thing for me that I've ever written. When I say I can write everything, I don't say I can write everything well.

Jess Walter

My poems... the ones that start out as jokes become these big ponderous things and the ones that start out ponderous devolve into jokes.

Jess Walter

I cling to the idea that Herman Melville had to work at the end of his career watching ships in a dock, as a shipping agent in New York. Any writer who thinks they should be given patronage because of their gift... you don't have to look too far in history to see that's just not the case.

Jess Walter

I come from a newspaper background, so maybe I'm attuned to current events.

Jess Walter

Often, the fact that I haven't done something as a writer is all the reason I need to try it.

Jess Walter

In seventh grade, with some vague sense that I wanted to be a writer, I crouched in the junior high school library stacks to see where my novels would eventually be filed. It was right after someone named Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. So I grabbed a Vonnegut book, 'Breakfast of Champions' and immediately fell in love.

Jess Walter

I pretty much drink a cup of coffee, write in my journal for a while, and then sit at a computer in my office and torture the keys. My one saving grace as a writer is that, if I'm having trouble with the novel I'm writing, I write something else, a poem or a short story. I try to avoid writer's block by always writing something.

Jess Walter

The first seven years that I wrote fiction, I sent out stories and a novel and made a total of $25.

Jess Walter

Forget being 'discovered.' All you can do is write. If you write well enough, and are stubborn enough to embrace failure, and if you happen to fall into the narrow categories that the book market recognizes, then you might make a little money. Otherwise, it's a struggle. A gorgeous struggle.

Jess Walter

I'm a writer, and the subject is less important than the act of writing itself.

Jess Walter

I probably would have gone the M.F.A. route except I was a dad at 19, and it made more sense to go to work for a newspaper and support a kid that way. But the funny thing is, that detour became the most important step in my developing as a novelist.

Jess Walter