David Bezmozgis Quotes
When writing dialogue, I hear it in both Russian and English, and try to find a language that combines the two.
Why are some people highly principled and willing to do anything for their principles, while most of us are not? And I am willing to not only ask, but also answer the question.
Nothing is easy in writing. I don't think for anyone. But dialogue is probably what comes most naturally to me.
Some is, I think, the personal in any act of writing. You find yourself caught up: you start a sentence, and it becomes revelatory, not just of the character, but of you as well.
There are different types of readers. People draw lines at which three things intersect: the character, the author, and the reader.
There are books like Darkness at Noon, which from the prose standpoint I don't think is a perfect book. It has flaws. But for its time, it was very politically courageous.
There are books where you can really see the moral question, which I think we answer every day for ourselves, in every interaction we have with people, to a lesser or greater degree.
I think every book is a reaction to everything you're written before, and most immediately to the book you wrote just before.
When you write a book, you want to have fidelity to the character. Characters and their emotions guide the structure of the novel.
Language is a personality as well. People are different when they speak different languages.
We all have some ideological quotient in ourselves. And I think it does guide who we are.
In my experience of women, women have a greater capacity. Maybe women, even very pragmatic ones, are less guarded about showing emotions.
We are taught that we can be better than we are. But is there a limit to how good we can be?
I spent seven years writing The Free World. There are a lot of things I accomplished there that I'm very proud of, but I didn't want to spend another seven years writing a book like that.