“As a Jewish thinker, I don't think of myself in relationship to the dominant culture's religion.” ThinkingCultureThinkerDominantDominant Culture Author:Emily Barton
“[Michael] Chabon is arguing in favor of what is at the same time an old-fashioned and very forward-thinking opening up - of taking off the class associations with those labels, because we grew up, or I certainly grew up, feeling that, "Oh, there's literary fiction, and beneath that, there's these other things." He's actually saying that they're all of equal merit, and in many cases, that work in the genres, or work that draws from the genres is more entertaining for readers, since it is our job to entertain people.” PeopleThinkingFeelingsJobsFictionClassCasesGrewReaderEqualGrew UpDrawsArguingFavorsOpeningLabelsGenreMeritAssociationEntertainingOld FashionedOpening UpGenre IsForward Thinking Author:Emily Barton
“I'm not for it [Brookland and The Testament of Yves Gundron ], I'm not against it, I'm just interested in it and how it functions, but I think that, in some senses, in those two novels, that was difficult for people to see.” PeopleThinkingTwoDifficultNovelFunctionSensesTestament Author:Emily Barton
“Nobody thinks that there were never mechanical horses in the world. Everybody knows that there aren't really golems.” ThinkingKnowsWorldHorse Author:Emily Barton
“I think that novels are one of the best means that we have to communicate both with the past and with the future.” ThinkingMeanPastNovelCommunicate Author:Emily Barton
“A novel is a way to rethink and rewrite and re-envision the past, and also a way to speak to people who haven't been born yet about what we think about right now.” PeopleThinkingWayPastSpeakBornNovelHavensRight Now Author:Emily Barton
“Historical fiction is a collaboration between the time in which it's written and the time that it's writing about and the far future, when we don't know what people are going to think about yet.” PeopleThinkingKnowsWritingFictionWrittenHistoricalCollaborationHistorical Fiction Author:Emily Barton
“Teaching and writing, really, they support and nourish each other, and they foster good thinking. Because when you show up in the classroom, you may have on the mantle of authority, but in fact, you're just a writer helping other writers think through their problems. Your experience with the problems you've tried to solve comes into play in how you try to teach them to solve their problems.” ThinkingWritingTryingMayPlayFactsHelpingShowsProblemTeachSupportTeachingAuthoritySolveHelping OthersClassroomGood Thinking Author:Emily Barton
“I tend to think of writing as a more collaborative project than I think some people do.” PeopleThinkingWritingProjects Author:Emily Barton
“I think about the collaboration between writers and readers, but I also think about the collaboration between all the writers in a generation or in a country or across time contributing to this massive project of documenting and reimagining our world.” ThinkingWorldCountryGenerationsReaderProjectsMassiveOur WorldCollaborationContributingReimagining Author:Emily Barton
“I think that whether you've just begun writing or whether you've been writing for fifty years - I mean, I'm excited to get there and tell you about it when I do - I think that there's always the challenge of believing in yourself enough to get the work done and not being so taken with yourself that you're unwilling to continue to work on the work.” ThinkingWritingYearsBelieveMeanDoneEnoughChallengesTakenExcitedFiftyBelieve In YourselfUnwillingWork Done Author:Emily Barton
“It's very difficult, I think for most writers, to carve out the time and the kind of imaginative space to do the writing that you really want to do and also to be an active, engaged, compassionate, giving human being in the world, to the people around you and to your broader community.” PeopleThinkingWorldWantGivingWritingHumansKindDifficultCommunityHuman BeingsSpaceActiveEngagedCompassionateImaginative Author:Emily Barton
“I do think that the idea of writer's block can be very self-defeating for most writers because it's taking a lot of things that are not only real problems, but that are manageable, solvable problems if you look at them in an individual fashion, and lumping them under the umbrella of something mysterious and vague, which makes it very, very difficult to address what's going on.” IfsThinkingLooksIdeasRealSelfProblemIndividualDifficultFashionBlockMysteriousAddressesVagueUmbrellaReal ProblemsWriter's BlockManageable Author:Emily Barton
“If I don't write every day for one week or even, frankly, one year, I don't really think too much about that.” IfsThinkingWritingYearsToo MuchWeek Author:Emily Barton
“I was working on the book, but in a very subterranean kind of a fashion. And I think that giving yourself permission to respect that, without being lazy and not doing work when you could be doing work and just don't feel like it - that's a different balance that can be complicated to strike.” ThinkingGivingFeelsKindBookDifferentFashionBalanceComplicatedStrikesLazyPermissionGiving YourselfBeing Lazy Author:Emily Barton
“I think that we're all always just working on finding how that balance functions for us, given today's circumstances.” ThinkingTodayGivenBalanceCircumstancesFindingsFunction Author:Emily Barton
“Because I think of novels as collaborative enterprises between the writer and the reader, all of my novels so far have ending with endings that maybe point in more than one direction, and that seems important to me because it seems important to me that after you've invested twenty or thirty hours of your imaginative life into this narrative that you have some stake in how it ends.” ThinkingImportantEndsSeemsHoursNovelReaderTwentiesNarrativeThirtyEnterpriseStakesImaginativeOne Direction Author:Emily Barton
