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Quote by Peter Orner

“To me, and I'm sure for other writers, too, characters come back and they relive again, but what about those characters who only live for a page or two? Or for five pages or 10 pages. I like to think they're still out there - still living - but for me they kind of die, too. It's kind of sad. I don't think about them anymore unless I give them life again.”

Quote by Peter Orner

Author

Peter Orner, born in 1968, is an American writer known for his unique narrative style and profound insights into human nature. His works cover a variety of themes, including family, love, memory, and social change. more

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“My first book came out again - the re-issue from 2001. I was rereading it to make sure that I didn't miss any mistakes, and I didn't know who had written some of these stories. I really didn't. I am a different person now. It's weird. I think if stories are good, they have to have a life of their own that's independent of the writer. I like to think of my characters out there in other peoples' heads. That's a nice thing to think about.”

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“What you can do with a short story that you can't do with a novel is punch someone in the gut, in the best of ways.”

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“A novel is like a long relationship and a short story is a brief one that lingers - it lingers powerfully and maybe more powerfully. I think that's true in a lot of cases, most long-term relationships compared to some of the briefer ones - the intensity of those brief ones that end, I think a short story is kind of like that. There's a certain level of intensity that I think is different.”

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“I'm constantly trying to figure out how to crack that mystery; how to make a novel that has a sense of immediacy of a short story. I try to do that and I'll try it again, but I'll never get it.”

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“I feel like there are too many words in the world, and I think silence is so much more powerful than the glut of words.”

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“We don't want emotion handed to us - that's not emotion. You have to build and come from the reader's soul.”

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“As a professor I can't teach writing.”

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“People have to follow their own strangeness. The minute they start making their own vision of the world flattened out so everyone can read it, they lose. I encourage people to be as awkward and odd on the page to capture their own way of seeing the world and not trying to see the world for other people.”

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“I'm pretty tight - I rewrite, in some cases, 70 to 80 times before I show it to people.”

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