American - Writer | -
Ever since studying in Russia as a college student, I had been in a long-distance, one-sided love affair with Chechnya's remarkable history, culture and rugged natural beauty.
Anthony Marra
LoveBeautyHistoryCultureCollege
Research is not an obstacle, something to be frightened of. It can be one of the real joys of writing.
ResearchWritingRealObstacleJoys
To make a book convincing, it's less important that the right tree be in the right place than that the characters are emotionally real.
TreeBookPlaceImportantRight
I didn't know a single person who had ever been there. I wasn't even sure how to spell Chechnya.
PersonKnowSingleSureBeenEven
I quickly realized I live the least interesting literary life imaginable. My parents are happily married. There haven't been any major traumas. I'm not sure that the story of my life would be much fun to read.
LifeLiveFunParentsStoryMy Life
You look at a surgeon as you would a secular priest, almost, if it's your child, if it's your sister on the operating table. That was an idea that very much has interested me and I've wanted to explore for some time.
TimeChildMeSisterYouLook
My first real awareness of Chechnya came when I was a college student studying in Russia. I arrived in St. Petersburg about two months after Anna Politkovskaya was assassinated for her reports on Chechnya. I lived with an elderly woman and her grown children in an apartment that was not too far from the neighborhood military cadet school.
ChildrenWomanSchoolCollegeFirst
I read all of the nonfiction that I could find on Chechnya, and all the while, I was searching for a novel that was set there. I couldn't find a single novel written in English that was set in the period of the two most recent Chechen wars.
FindTwoSearchingSingleNonfiction
When I visited Chechnya, I was taken aback at first because people would regularly make jokes about kidnapping me.
PeopleMeFirstJokesBecauseWould
There was something about the idea of Russia that I found very intriguing, and I think I had romanticized it a lot.
ThinkRussiaSomethingIdeaFound
I'm wondering when you hit the age where people say, 'Oh, OK, he's not so young.'
AgePeopleYouYoungSayPeople Say
Wars break things; they break stories.
BreakThingsStoriesWars
Copyright © 2024 QuotesDict Anthony Marra quotes