American - Author | February 3, 1972 -
Fear warps our understanding of reality and even our ability to see reality clearly.
Victor LaValle
FearRealityUnderstandingSeeEven
I've spent my life visiting a handful of people who are very close to me when they've been committed to one hospital or another in New York.
LifeNew YorkPeopleMeMy LifeNew
The best monsters are our anxieties given form. They make sense on the level of a dream - or a nightmare.
BestDreamMonstersLevelSenseOur
Bram Stoker's 'Dracula' was a story about the fear of immigration; the bad old bloodsucker swooping in from Eastern Europe and also preying upon 'our' vulnerable women.
FearWomenStoryImmigrationBad
You can't write a story about a mental hospital in the United States without facing the grand example of 'Cuckoo's Nest.'
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I like America, where believers eddy around each other like currents of air. Even our atheists are devout! To be an American is to be a believer. I don't have much faith in institutions, but I still believe in people.
FaithPeopleBelieveAmericanAir
The profession is never going back to those days when a handful of wealthy people treated publishing like a hobby: one where the business can lose money because the family has lots of it to burn. Frankly, I don't think that model was ever sustainable, and it really only enriched a small number of writers.
FamilyBusinessMoneyPeopleSmall
I know that many authors say editors don't edit anymore, but that's not been true in my experience.
ExperienceKnowSayTrueBeenEdit
Try imagining James Joyce not writing about being a Catholic.
WritingTryBeingCatholicAbout
It's tough to write beautifully about ugly things, but Mitchell S. Jackson makes it look easy.
UglyToughEasyLookWriteThings
Since Queens is the most ethnically diverse plot of land on Earth, we had tenants from all over the globe. The whole world in one building.
WorldBuildingEarthLandOverPlot
For as long as I could remember, the person in E23 pasted the same Halloween decoration, a witch with a giant wart on her crone's nose, but whenever kids rang, the tenant wouldn't answer. At first, kids figured they'd just missed the guy: bad timing. But it seemed impossible that all of us missed him every year.
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