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John Jeremiah Sullivan Quotes

American - Writer | 1974 -

It is a curious fact that the word 'essayist' showed up in English before it existed in French.

John Jeremiah Sullivan

Curious Up English Fact Word Before

There's a half-conscious state you enter when you're actually generating prose, and you are simply a better writer in that place. In fact it's the only place where you even are a writer.

John Jeremiah Sullivan

Better You Place Where Only Even

This to me is the secret comedy of all author interviews, down through the ages, even the good ones in the 'Paris Review' and places. They're all acting. It's like watching a person in a play.

John Jeremiah Sullivan

Good Me Comedy Acting Down Play

Freaky things happen all the time in the world. I suppose everything has to happen for the first time at some point.

John Jeremiah Sullivan

Time World Things Happen First Time

As the planet warms, evolution speeds. We've known this for a long time.

John Jeremiah Sullivan

Time Long Evolution Long Time Planet

Ireland starts for me with the end of 'The Dead,' which my father read to me from his desk in his basement office in New Albany, Ind.

John Jeremiah Sullivan

Father Me End Desk New Office

The greenness of Ireland is a false greenness, after all. Not that it isn't green - the place can still make you have to pull off and swallow one of your heart pills. It's that the greenness doesn't mean what it seems. It doesn't encode a pastoral past, much less a timeless vale where wee folk trip the demesne.

John Jeremiah Sullivan

Heart Past Green You Place Mean

The city of Cork - the urban center, where all the shops and bars and everything are - is actually an island, a river island.

John Jeremiah Sullivan

River City Island Everything Urban

Thinking you're a genius is death.

John Jeremiah Sullivan

Death Thinking Genius You

I want to stay in touch with what I have in common with my subjects, with the places where are equally implicated with whatever is wrong with the culture.

John Jeremiah Sullivan

Culture Wrong Want Places Touch

The initial research will be very indiscriminate. I do a lot of reading, buy a stack of books and read and digest them, and then I start doing phone interviews and archival research and then the travelling.

John Jeremiah Sullivan

Research Start Reading Doing Phone

I'm a passionate believer in revision, and a lot of my writing gets done during revision process. It isn't just tweaking: I tend to break it apart and remake it every time I do a new draft.

John Jeremiah Sullivan

Time Writing Process New Done Break

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