Home / Quotes / Quote by Nick Laird

Quote by Nick Laird

“If you grew up Protestant in Ireland, of course, at least in the twentieth century, there was always a contingent that would never really consider you Irish. Meanwhile in Britain you'd never quite be considered British. You fell into a gap in the definitions.”

Quote by Nick Laird

Author

Nick Laird, born in 1975, is an accomplished Irish novelist known for his distinctive narrative style and profound portrayal of rural Irish life. more

You May Also Like

“Now that the most interesting matter of identity is not what place someone was born in, but what point in time they are from - where they sit in relation to time. Age has become much more divisive than place. With the Internet and globalization, a twenty-year-old in New York has far more cultural references in common with a twenty-year-old in Nebraska than they do with a thirty-year-old who lives next door. National identity is what they trick you with when they want your feet in their army boots or your taxes in their bailouts.”

Age Interesting Common Identity Internet Taxes Army Relation Globalization Most Interesting

Author:Nick Laird

“With an age difference comes a great gap in cultural references, and so on. It's not all about race and gender. It interests me that, as you get older, your younger self becomes a stranger to you. A split occurs within yourself. But maybe we're all always strangers to ourselves.”

Age Interest Stranger Gender

Author:Nick Laird

“I think all writing is political. All writing shows a preoccupation with something, whatever that thing might be, and by putting pen to paper you are establishing a hierarchy of some sort - this emotion over that emotion, this memory over that memory, this thought over another. And isn't that process of establishing a hierarchy on the page a kind of political act?”

Thinking Writing Kind Political Memories Emotion Pens

Author:Nick Laird

“I think all writing is an attempt to complicate and subvert the dominant narrative. Writing personalizes statistics. It puts a face and a name on a number. I suppose in that sense it's always political.”

Thinking Writing Political

Author:Nick Laird

“I think all writing is about writing. All writing is a way of going out and exploring the world, of examining the way we live, and therefore any words you put down on the page about life will, at some level, also be words about words. It's still amazing, though, how many poems can be read as being analogous to the act of writing a poem. "Go to hell, go into detail, go for the throat" is certainly about writing, but it's also hopefully about a way of living.”

Thinking World Writing Hell Hopefully Exploring

Author:Nick Laird

“Publishing a book is a great thing, and I'm grateful, but it's also a horrible, exposing thing. Once you've published a book, you never write quite as freely again. You're aware, from that point onward, of the kinds of things critics might say about it. You're aware of the kinds of things your publishers might like and dislike about it. You're half-aware of marketing strategies - of all the stuff around the book. Whereas with your very first piece of fiction, if you're lucky, those things barely occur to you at all.”

Writing Kind Book Lucky Grateful Strategy Critics Marketing Horrible Great Things Dislike Publishing

Author:Nick Laird

“I think New York is working its way into my poems. It takes a while for a place to filter its way onto the page, but I've been reading more and more American poetry and I certainly feel it as quite a freeing force. Coming from the formally ordered tradition of poetry in Ireland, I find the expansiveness of American literature freeing in some sense.”

Thinking Reading Literature Tradition Ireland American Literature

Author:Nick Laird

“New York allows you to go deeper into the person you want to be. You're able to explore whatever your specific interests might be. You can eat good Japanese food if you want to eat good Japanese food. You can go and see your favorite author reading, and you can still listen to Radio Ulster on the internet as you have your breakfast. I love that.”

Reading Interest Internet Your Favorite

Author:Nick Laird

“I still feel like I don't know what I'm doing. Like, I'm unsure of what my life will be like. I mean, I have such an obsession with making movies that I probably will always do that. But sometimes my life can feel so suffocating, and then it can feel so massive, like I don't have a handle on it at all, and I don't know where it's going or what I'm going to do. Right now, I'm known for making movies. And I wonder if that's it. I don't know. It doesn't feel like it to me.”

Mean Sometimes Wonder Obsession Unsure Suffocating

Author:Dakota Johnson

“It seems like the world is so fast to move its interest to someone else. When I think about filmmakers and actresses that I have admired my whole life, I've admired their entire body of work. I have admired what they began with and what they're doing now. And now I feel like there's such a weird pressure to find the new face. I don't get it at all. I want to see women evolve. I want to see a body of work. I want to see all of it.”

Thinking World Moving Interest Whole Life Evolve Filmmaker

Author:Dakota Johnson