Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Dinaw Mengestu

Quote by Dinaw Mengestu

“Don't think about how your characters sound, but how they see. Watch the world through their eyes - study the extraordinary and the mundane through their particular perspective. Walk around the block with them, stroll the rooms they live in, figure out what objects on the cluttered dining room table they would inevitably stare at the longest, and then learn why.”

Quote by Dinaw Mengestu

Author

Dinaw Mengestu
Dinaw Mengestu

Dinaw Mengestu is a contemporary Ethiopian-American novelist recognized for his exploration of themes such as immigration, identity, and the African diaspora. Born in 1978, he has gained acclaim for his insightful narratives that frequently reflect on the experiences of African immigrants in the United States. more

You May Also Like

“And we all get mired in the bullshit, the personality quirks, the personality disorders (ours and everyone else's), the jealousy, the disappointment, the blocks, the financial struggle, our egos, I do it too, I do it too, but if you can't remember it is all about the work and nothing else then I can't help you and you can't help yourself and you will lose. I promise you. You will lose.”

“I could give you absolutely sterling advice on how to avoid writing, how when you run out of things to do other than going to your desk and writing, when every closet is reorganized and you've called your oldest living relative twice in one day to see what she's up to and there isn't an unanswered e-mail left on your computer or you simply can't bear to answer another one and there is no dignity, not a drop left, in any further evasion of the task at hand, namely writing, well, you can always ask your dentist for a root canal or have an accident in the bathtub instead.”

“I remember standing on a street corner with the black painter Beauford Delaney down in the Village, waiting for the light to change, and he pointed down and said, 'Look.' I looked and all I saw was water. And he said, 'Look again,' which I did, and I saw oil on the water and the city reflected in the puddle. It was a great revelation to me. I can't explain it. He taught me how to see, and how to trust what I saw. Painters have often taught writers how to see. And once you've had that experience, you see differently.”

“The other producer of old age is habit: the deathly process of doing the same thing in the same way at the same hour day after day, first from carelessness, then from inclination, at last from cowardice or inertia. Luckily the inconsequent life is not the only alternative; for caprice is as ruinous as routine. Habit is necessary; it is the habit of having habits, of turning a trail into a rut, that must be incessantly fought against if one is to remain alive.”