American - Novelist | 1964 -
Early on in the writing, there is often a sentence that pins down a character for me.
Amor Towles
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When I was 10 years old, I threw a bottle with a note in it in the ocean in Massachusetts, and Harrison Salisbury found it and contacted me. We began a correspondence that lasted for years, and I eventually met him when I was 18.
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I have the foundation to write, and then I go back and do research, and some of that might influence the recrafting of certain scenes.
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I love 19th-century Russian literature, the avant garde, the Soviet period.
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In retrospect, the pace of change in the arts and industry in the nineteenth century seems pretty glacial. Painting, music, the novel, architecture were all evolving, but at a pretty observable pace.
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Some writers such as John Cheever and Raymond Carver seem to draw artistic energy from analyzing the realm of their own experiences - their social circles and memories and mores. I'm one of those who draw creative energy from the opposite.
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In 1989, I had a fellowship to teach for Yale in China for two years. I came back from California to New Haven to spend the summer learning Chinese, but because of Tiananmen Square, Yale cancelled the program.
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Say I lived until 80 and read a book a month seriously, that means I was looking at 480 books left in my life. If I had only 480 left, I wanted to stop sifting through material I didn't have confidence in and turn my attention to those that I know merited my reading.
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As a youth, I always did a good deal of reading in the summer months, having suffered since birth from an allergy to athletic activity.
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In my college years, I would retreat to our summer house for two weeks in June to read a novel a day. How exciting it was, after pouring my coffee and making myself comfortable on the porch, to open the next book on the roster, read the first sentences, and find myself on the platform of a train station.
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As a traveler, I should probably count myself fortunate to be living in the jet age, and as an author, I know I am lucky to have a book tour at all.
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I've always loved reading manifestos. Collectively, they represent a triumph of style.
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