Christopher Bollen Quotes
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I have to say I do read partly for escapism. Why can't I escape and learn something?
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There seem to be two ways of generating interest from the reader: withholding information or by telling the reader on the first page exactly what's going to happen.
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I wanted to reexamine the idea of the album for generations of people who are not my age, who love music or learning about music or are finding this band called R.E.M. or have just previously heard "Losing My Religion" and "Everybody Hurts" as their elevator music. I wanted to present an idea of what an album could be in the age of YouTube and the Internet.
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Safety, reputation, their lives, their friends, and their world. Writers typically try to avoid that because it's not expedient.
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I'm convinced I was the only kid ever who had a Death on the Nile [1978] movie poster and a Murder on the Orient Express [1974] movie poster on his bedroom walls.
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I had been going out to Orient for several years.
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Every time I try to write on vacation, I fail miserably.
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There is a value to moving more slowly through a story.
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There's something about fear and aesthetic that go hand in hand.
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It's always surprised me that mainstream America had the good taste to like R.E.M. It doesn't have the digestible quality the general public tends to look for in its favorite musicians.
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I would stay at my grandma's house on my birthday every year and I remember she had a bookshelf of murder mystery books along with really frightening books, like one on Jack the Ripper. She also had a poster of a shark in the closet which also terrified me at the time.
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There is something very romantic about the orphan figure in American literature.
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I'm really much better at asking questions than answering them, since asking questions is like a constant deflection of oneself.
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One day I want to write a full-on horror book.
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I was a very scared child.
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To this day I still watch tons of horror.
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It's really hard to write about art in general. But it's exceptionally hard to fictionalize art and make work that isn't a parody, or is something that could withstand critique and exist in the art world as a valuable object, or a true piece.
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I don't think secrets are a bad thing. I think there's this idea that everything needs to be transparent in order for it to be free.
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For me, cultivation of my own style really started by looking at people. There are just some really beautiful people in the world. When you're walking down the street, or you're at a restaurant, someone catches your eye because they have their own look. It goes way beyond what they're wearing-into their mannerisms, the way they smile, or just the way they hold themselves.
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It's always fun to welcome new people into your life. When dating anyone or becoming friends with anyone who has a different profession, a different life, it opens doors. All my friends here do such different creative things. It's so awesome.
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My parents were great parents, but for some bizarre reason they allowed me to watch whatever I wanted on TV, we had cable. And I constantly watched horror movies.
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I also wonder why is it that so many of the movies and books that are detective stories are also the most aesthetically interesting? From Hollywood noirs to horror movies like The Shining [1980].
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I'm ultimately not so much of a professor as a progresser. And I'm ready to move away from what I consider to be this weird mid-century dream that I feel pulls us as a country, and us as a culture, backward.
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I had lived in New York since 1996, sometimes in the worst neighborhoods, without even locking my door half the time.
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It's just as political, what you do in the bedroom is just as political as what you do in public.
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I feel that I'm solid at description.
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Why I love chess and tennis - the volleying aspect, and the fact that your competitors' reactions and motivations and bluffs come into the game itself.
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I like to be alone, I mean, I really love to be alone more than anything else, and I don't really like to talk about myself to death, and I don't like to share too much, and I don't really have dreams of extreme fame or even extreme respect.
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An album for me as a teenager in the '70s was a fully formed concept. It was a body of work from an artist I liked or trusted or who excited me. Maybe one of the songs is really poppy and you listen to it on the radio as a hit single and then more of the world is about to find out about this artist by buying the record.
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I really believe there is something in the nature of a democracy that naturally leads people to distrust the government, to assume because a democracy is built by people just like themselves that there must be secret plots and cover-ups and wizards behind the scenes running the machine.
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