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Quote by Anthony Marra

“From personal experience, I completely agree that it is often easier to go for monotone sadness. When I was starting out, I wrote a gazillion short stories that ran the gamut of human suffering - drug addiction, child abuse, terminal illness, loved ones dying by all manner of misfortune, etc. In hindsight, it's clear that I mistook the power of the situation for the power of the story.”

Quote by Anthony Marra

Author

Anthony Marra is an American writer born in 1984. His works are known for their delicate emotions and profound themes, particularly for his skill in depicting the conflicts and complexities of human emotions in the Middle East. more

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“We all know to feel sympathy for those who've suffered from drug addiction, child abuse, and terminal illness, so the set up elicits an emotional response that the story itself very well may not earn. Energy generated by the fiction itself is likely to produce more light.”

“We tend to associate humor with lightheartedness, but really, it's a rhetorical mode than can be applied to any subject. It was through researching Chechnya that I came to understand this.”

Subjects Associates Rhetorical Chechnya Lightheartedness

Author:Anthony Marra

“In my own work, humor is necessary, for the reasons stated above, but also because forbidding your characters silliness, absurdity, irony, and vulgarity forbids them aspects of the human experience every bit as universal as sorrow.”

Humans Reason Character Bits My Own Sorrow Aspect Universal Irony Absurdity Human Experience Vulgarity Silliness Work Humor

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“Sometimes it bursts from your imagination fully formed, sometimes you absorb from nonfiction, sometimes you're able to imprint your own autobiographical experiences on a world you never yourself were a part of. A decent number of the one-liners in the title story originally came up in conversations with my girlfriend or my neighbor.”

World Sometimes Stories Able Imagination Numbers Conversation Neighbor Titles Girlfriend Decent Nonfiction My Girlfriend One Liner

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“Anytime I can get either of them really laughing, I immediately pull out a pad of paper write the joke down, regardless of where we are or what we're doing. I must be absolutely insufferable.”

Writing I Can Laughing Paper Jokes Pads Insufferable

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“Historically, education has been about batch processing: standardize everything against the average, rank kids, sort them to see who gets more and who really doesn't deserve to be there. The problem, even if you're just being selfish from an economic standpoint, is we're not producing the talent we need.”

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“We need to develop people rather than process them.”

People Needs Process

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“Right now, for instance, we resist giving people extra time on exams or for assignments, as though it's unfair to the faster students.”

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“The whole idea of timing tests is a century old, from a scientist who thought speed and ability were tightly correlated, which they are not.”

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“I felt what I was trying to do was make people realize that comics could be deep. I stopped myself in the middle of saying that because the Bazooka Joe thing I do with Dante's Inferno, that was just a goof. I wasn't trying to make people look at Bazooka Joe more seriously. But in my mind it's always been important.”

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