Meg Wolitzer quotes - page 2

I sometimes feel as if ideas for a novel kind of pop up like numbers in a bingo tumbler, and then they're ready to go. (Meg Wolitzer)
We all want to write the kind of book that we want to read. If you put in the things that you are thinking about and create characters who feel like they could live - at least for me, that's the way I want to write. View quote
Meg Wolitzer
I think a lot of the dull parts of first drafts come from a kind of over-managing, intrusive writer who wants to direct traffic. The idea of taking out the parts that the reader could infer is very liberating, and it's weirdly part of radicalizing your work: it allows you to go to new places fast. View quote
Meg Wolitzer
I'm really interested in women of different generations... I think there is no one female experience. View quote
Meg Wolitzer
'Pleasure' is a word I think about a lot, as opposed to 'entertainment.' They are very, very different. View quote
Meg Wolitzer
Novels can be a snapshot of a moment in time, or several moments in time, and as a reader, that's what I really like, and as a writer, it's what I'm drawn to also. View quote
Meg Wolitzer
I really love Scrabble. I played it with my mother growing up. We took it everywhere with us. We didn't know then about the two letter words. Who knew that AA, or more controversially, ZA, or QI were words? We were a games family generally. View quote
Meg Wolitzer
I do want to say the process of writing a novel is riddled with self-doubt and self-loathing. View quote
Meg Wolitzer
It's gratifying to be taken seriously, always. View quote
Meg Wolitzer
These are old issues. Female power, misogyny, the treatment of women, how you make meaning in the world. And these are all issues that I've been thinking about and writing about for a very long time. View quote
Meg Wolitzer
It's hard for me to feel bad when I'm writing well. (Meg Wolitzer)
When you have a book out, it's like a period of protracted or concentrated megalomania, and it's really not normal or good for you or any of that. View quote
Meg Wolitzer
Some people are uncomfortable saying what they feel. View quote
Meg Wolitzer
Being a teacher at a restaurant in the town where you lived was a little like being a TV star. View quote
Meg Wolitzer
We are all here, on this earth for only one go around. And everyone thinks their purpose is to just find their passion. But perhaps our purpose is to find what other people need. View quote
Meg Wolitzer
And I also know that pain can seem like an endless ribbon. You pull it and you pull it. You keep gathering it toward you, and as it collects, you really can't believe that there's something else at the end of it. Something that isn't just more pain. But there's always something else at the end; something at least a little different. You never know what that thing will be, but it's there. View quote
Meg Wolitzer
The child who was happy with herself meant the parents had won the jackpot. View quote
Meg Wolitzer
While it's true that some writers, when taking on love and war, find the task too big, or only succeed in one but not the other, Mengestu tracks both themes with authority and feeling. View quote
Meg Wolitzer
You stayed around your children as long as you could, inhaling the ambient gold shavings of their childhood, and at the last minute you tried to see them off into life and hoped that the little piece of time you'd given them was enough to prevent them from one day feeling lonely and afraid and hopeless. You wouldn't know the outcome for a long time. View quote
Meg Wolitzer
You had only one chance for a signature in life, but most people left no impression. View quote
Meg Wolitzer
This post-college world felt different from everything that had come before it. (Meg Wolitzer)
Everybody has a theme. You talk to somebody awhile, and you realize they have one particular thing that rules them. The best you can do is a variation on the theme, but that's about it. View quote
Meg Wolitzer
The only option for a creative person was constant motion-a lifetime of busy whirligigging in a generally forward direction, until you couldn't do it any longer. View quote
Meg Wolitzer
But it's never just been the journals that have made the difference, I don't think. It's also the way the students are with one another . . . the way they talk about books and authors and themselves. Not just their problems, but their passions too. The way they form a little society and discuss whatever matters to them. Books light the fire-whether it's a book that's already written, or an empty journal that needs to be filled in. View quote
Meg Wolitzer
For me, a novel relying too heavily on a single idea might be a dry, deadly thing unless it possesses an animating force. View quote
Meg Wolitzer