Rob Roberge Quotes

The least trusted testimony in a court of law is eyewitness testimony. We are simply not good reporters of facts that happen to us, or in front of us. But that's not the same as knowingly lying.

I think the act of lying can be separated from the genre of memoir. Though often times, people are unaware of their own subjectivity.

The biggest thing was that second person allowed me to trick myself into revealing more about myself. It gave me an authorial distance to get closer to the action and emotions, if that makes sense.

I like the fact that second person puts the reader in the story. It makes them, whether they like it or not, complicit in the action.

I think every narrator is an unreliable narrator. In its classic definition - an unreliable narrator is one who reveals something they don't know themselves to be revealing. We all do that.

I like a text that reminds the reader its a text sometimes.

I'd say the music influences the writing - the music and rhythm of the prose - much more than the writing influences the music.

You can't hide behind the guise of fiction. No matter how autobiographical a fictional scene is, you can always tell the reader - in protecting yourself - that you made it up.

I don't teach narrative theory by itself anymore, but I kind of use it when critiquing student manuscripts. So, it works its way in there, whether I like it or not.

My teaching career started with me teaching comp at a very small school in Buffalo. And I was terrible at that point. They never should have hired me.

I have an MFA in writing. It is debatable if they are right for everyone, but I had a mentor who really changed my life, so it worked for me.

It took me seven years of writing before I published my first story. And then, the publications trickled in over the next five years.

I wasn't doing much work when I was using and drinking. I have friends who did it (work), but I wasn't one of those people.

For me, addiction never really included telling myself that everything was okay. By the time I was deep in my addictions, I knew things were pretty bad and I had no control over them.