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Caitlín R. Kiernan Quotes
born 1964 Ireland
Caitlín Rebekah Kiernan (born 26 May 1964) is an Irish-born American author, paleontologist, and prolific blogger perhaps most famous for the novels The Drowning Girl: A Memoir and The Red Tree. Kiernan is a two-time recipient of both the World Fantasy and Bram Stoker awards.
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40 quotes
I sense that many readers want nothing more complex or challenging than wind-up toys. It's dispiriting.
Magick may be no more than the willful invocation of awe.
A good writing day is a day when one has written well, and the word counts be damned. Finishing is not the goal. Doing the job well is the goal.
Every month, the US is spending more on the Iraqi war than it took to reach Saturn and Titan. Mass murder is expensive, and good science is relatively cheap.
If there must be resolution and explanation, it must be something worth its weight in mystery. Most times, I'd be content with the mystery.
Personally, I have my doubts that science can be said to be genuinely progressive, but I'm pretty dammed certain that art is not. Which is not to say that it is not accumulative or accretionary.
I want a T-shirt that says, "Art is Emo." We live in an age where people are more apt to believe a thing if they read it on a T-shirt.
It is my job, as a writer, to give the world toffee and peanut brittle and tough steak and celery.
Bad writing days are days when you mean to write and can't, or are interrupted so frequently that nothing gets done.
Art should never be a slave to commerce, but for all working artists that's exactly what it must be.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man will poke out his eye to fit in.
A book may only be judged for what it is, not what you'd like it to be.
The world wants oatmeal. It is not my job to give the world oatmeal.
I'm not kidding, and I'm not being hyperbolic — sometimes I hate this thing I do more than I could ever say.
Yes, I'm sure it makes people more money, and money is nice, but it has very little to do with telling good and true and useful stories.
There are many words and phrases that should be forever kept out of the hands of book reviewers. It's sad, but true. And one of these is "self-indulgent."
Could anything be more inimical to art than a fear of emotion, or a fear of "excessive" emotion, or a reluctance to express emotion around others?
A writer who does not write is nothing. One may as well be a fisherman who doesn't fish, a stripper who doesn't strip, or a beggar who doesn't beg.
The writing of a novel or short story or poem or whatever should elevate the audience, not drag the writer down to some level beneath herself.
Originality is the most deadly mirage in all of art. You can chase it from now until doomsday, and you'll only find yourself lost and dying of thirst.
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