“But it's not just me, you know. The whole world's sad," I said. "It's like a virus. It's going to end badly. Glaciers melting, ozone depleted. Terrorists blowing up buildings, nuclear rods infecting the aqueducts. Influenza hopping from the pigeons to the humans, killing millions. Billions. People rotting in the street. The sun bursting open, shattering us eight minutes later. If not that, starvation. Cannibalism. Freakish mutated babies with eyeballs in their navels. It's a terrible place to bring a child into," I said. "This world. It is terrible. Just terrible.” WorldSadnessEndingsAwfulness Book:The Monsters of Templeton Source: The Monsters of Templeton
“The world is sometimes too much for Bit, too full of terror and beauty. Every day he finds himself squeezed under a new astonishment. The universe pulses outward at impossible speeds. Bit feels its spin into nothing.” WorldLifeUniverseAstonishmentBeing OverwhelmedOverwhelmingness Book:Arcadia Source: Arcadia
“If the literary category of 'mordant fable' exists at all, it may be because Brock Clarke invented it. The Happiest People in the World is everything we fans have come to love from a Clarke novel: playful and deliriously skewed, and somehow balancing between genuinely great-hearted and gloriously weird.” PeopleIfsWorldMayNovelFansCategoriesHeartedFables Author:Lauren Groff
“A lot of my work comes from a place of despair or fear. I often write in order to gain some sort of control over aspects of my life or the world that seem too dark to look at directly.” WorldWritingLooksSeemsOrderDarkDespairGainsAspect Author:Lauren Groff
“When I write new worlds, I work in layers, building and throwing out, and building anew.” WorldWritingBuildingThrowingNew WorldLayers Author:Lauren Groff
“While writing, writers are living inside a character or characters, and when the book ekes into the world, writers are living inside the reader. That's more than connecting.” WorldWritingBookCharacterReaderConnecting Author:Lauren Groff
“The triumph of writing fiction is that by doing so, writers can build a more ideal world in themselves.” WorldWritingFictionIdealsTriumphWriting FictionIdeal World Author:Lauren Groff
“I'm an anxious person in general, but something about being pregnant and awaiting the release of my first book, The Monsters Of Templeton, made me into an insane anxious person. I didn't sleep at night. I ended up sleeping all day. In a strange way I felt like the world was going to end. I found myself so deeply depressed at times that I started to read about happiness, and that took me into books about idealism and utopianism. Reading books about people who tried to build utopian societies of different kinds gave me a kind of lift.” PeopleWorldKindBookDifferentNightReadingSleepStrangeInsaneAnxiousDifferent KindsReading BooksPregnantIdealismUtopian Author:Lauren Groff
“Reading about utopianism, and eventually creating characters with their own utopian ambitions, was the way I learned to live with being a pregnant person, to stave off the sense of incipient disaster. You're bringing a person into this overcrowded world, knowing they're one day going to die and there's nothing you can do about it.” WorldCharacterReadingOne DayAmbitionDisasterPregnantUtopian Author:Lauren Groff
“I feel lucky. I do love it, mostly. At college I had it in my heart that I wanted to be a writer but I didn't want to tell anyone about it. Then I graduated and became a bartender in Philadelphia, writing during the day. I was the worst bartender in the world.” WorldWritingHeartWorstCollegeMy HeartLuckyBartender Author:Lauren Groff
“I feel like in American fiction we're moving out of a period of intense irony, and I'm very glad about that. I feel like irony is fine for its own sake but shouldn't be the sole reason to write a book. It has been an ironic world view: that's the best way I can describe it. I'm a fan of earnestness. I feel like there's a new wave of earnestness and I'd be happy if I'm some small part of that.” WorldWritingBookReasonMovingWaveGladIntenseIronyIronicWorld ViewEarnestnessMoving Out Author:Lauren Groff
“I'm feminist in that I believe that there should be equality between men and women. I get deeply frustrated on a daily basis by the enormous gender divide in the U.S. literary world. But I don't know how to deal with it, so I don't tend to say much about it.” MenWorldBelieveI BelieveMen And WomenFeministGenderFrustrated Author:Lauren Groff
“And she, the new mother of a daughter, felt a fierceness come over her that seized at her heart, that made her feel as if her bones were turned to steel, as if she could turn herself into a weapon to keep this daughter of hers from having to be hurt by the world outside the ring of her arms.” IfsWorldFeelsHeartMadeMotherTurnsFeltHurtArmsWeaponsDaughterBonesRingsSteelFiercenessNew Mother Author:Lauren Groff
“In this moment that blooms and fades as it passes, he is enough, and all is well in the world.” WorldWellsEnoughMomentsFades Author:Lauren Groff
“Who, in the midst of passion, is vigilant against illness? Who listens to the reports of recently decimated populations in Spain, India, Bora Bora, when new lips, tongues and poems fill the world?” WorldPassionIndiaLipsPopulationIllnessTongueReportsMidstSpainVigilantBora Bora Author:Lauren Groff
