“And really, what would I have done all the years without a monster sound system in my car? Where else, beyond the walls of a club, can you experience bass loud enough to wipe your memory clean without complaint from the neighbors? Sound systems are what turn cars into escape vehicles, even if you've got nowhere to go. A drive to the convenience store is five minutes of that storm blowing in from paradise. I'll take the sneers of oldsters at intersections expecting gunfire. The relief is too rare to give up for civility's sake.” HumorMusicEscape From Reality Book:Imagine Me Gone Source: Imagine Me Gone
“Du und alle Erben des Wohlstands, die glauben, das Leben sei eine Frage perfektionierter Gefühle. Ihr irrt euch.” Hingabe Book:You are Not a Stranger Here Source: You are Not a Stranger Here
“Kind of gay? I wanted to say. Do you have any notion how many homosexuals sweated their ass off on the dance floor to make this soaring bit of derivative trash possible? How many died of AIDS, OD'd, or went broke on the way to that girl from Texas cutting a deal...” MusicGayDanceAidsDiscoFunk Book:Imagine Me Gone Source: Imagine Me Gone
“If the history of the American sentence were a John Ford movie, its second act would conclude with the young Ernest Hemingway walking into a saloon, finding an etiolated Henry James slumped at the bar in a haze of indecision, and shooting him dead.” IfsYoungWalkingFindingsSentencesBarsShootingIndecisionHazeSaloons Author:Adam Haslett
“You have to expose part of yourself to create a character deep enough for readers to care about. You try not to because it's hard and at times shameful, but then when you read those pages over and you see they have no life to them so you throw them away and force yourself to be more honest. So I suppose the answer is I see myself in all my characters, in their best moments and in their worst.” TryingHardEnoughMomentsCharacterCareForceAnswersWorstHonestReaderPagesShamefulBest Moments Author:Adam Haslett
“As I see it, my job as a writer isn't to judge, but to take a reader as far inside as I can and let them dwell there.” I CanJobsJudgingReader Author:Adam Haslett
“My interest is always to get as deeply as I can into the minds and spirits of the characters and let the readers empathize or judge as they will.” MindI CanCharacterSpiritInterestJudgingReader Author:Adam Haslett
“We live in a bureaucratic, atomized world, but the system is still run by human beings. If as a writer, you want to capture the world we live in, I think you have some responsibility to at least try to get at some of the ways we've chosen to govern ourselves.” IfsThinkingWorldWayWantTryingHumansStillsRunningHuman BeingsResponsibilityChosenCapture Author:Adam Haslett
“That is much of what I think the writer's job is - to slow people down. To give them the chance to notice the passage of time as experienced by others as a reminder of what it is like to be alive. Because we are most often distracted from that. Massively distracted.” PeopleThinkingGivingJobsChanceAlivePassagesRemindersDistractedPassage Of Time Author:Adam Haslett
“It is a negative sort of achievement, she thinks, to have spent a life warding something off.” ThinkingDepressionAchievementNegativeIllnessMental Illness Book:You are Not a Stranger Here Source: You are Not a Stranger Here
“Only the luckless, the petty or the deranged [end] up in court.” EndsCourtPettyDeranged Author:Adam Haslett