Laura van den Berg
Quotes by Laura van den Berg
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Unlike a novel, where you expect a different kind of arc that leaves us with a somber sense of resolution, I think a story in some ways as like a train window: being able to watch the landscape pass for a certain amount of time. And then your stop arrives, and you have to leave.
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I think, in a lot of ways, if you really strip down some of the most compelling novels, in a lot of ways, they're detective stories.
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I love many realists but very strongly resist the notion that realism presents a less stylized, more authentic version of the world.
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Often, contrasts bring art to life: the bright speck of paint on a dark canvas; the tightrope walk between humor and tragedy.
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I am a pretty omnivoracious reader in respect to prose style, but if the prose doesn't have its own music, if the relationship to the sentence seems unconsidered or superficial, I have a really hard time reading the work.
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A collection is, by my lights, a chance to build a universe, an overarching ecosystem. But it's common enough to encounter a hodgepodge instead, where flashes of brilliance are undercut by clunkers.
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Not long after watching 'The Passenger,' I wrote the first lines of 'The Isle of Youth,' which concerns twin sisters who swap identities and become ensnared in the Miami underworld.
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As a reader, I appreciate a world that feels unsettled and also visceral, inhabitable, so that's a quality I try and bring to my own work. In this way, dislocation and precision make total sense to me as a unit.
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Since childhood, I've been a fan of mysteries - 'Nancy Drew' lovers unite! - but 'Vertigo' struck me as an entirely new take on the genre.
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I wager we have a vast amount of literature out there that tends to the stories of men, so I've never really worried too much about attending to stories of women.
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The past is an open wound, a life force busily shaping an increasingly bewildering present.
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