Joshua Ferris
Joshua Ferris
Joshua Ferrisis an American author best known for his debut 2007 novel Then We Came to the End. The book is a comedy about the American workplace, told in the first-person plural. It takes place in a fictitious Chicago ad agency that is experiencing a downturn at the end of the '90s Internet boom...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
CountryUnited States of America
Joshua Ferris quotes about
struggle character emotional
Names generate meaning in a short amount of space — they provoke thoughts, questions. That's something I like doing. Of course, you have to be careful. Sometimes it can alienate the reader, it can be another level of mediation, to make a character carry the great burden of a metaphoric name. The character can be a device before he or she becomes a person, and that can be a bad thing for a writer who wants to offer up a kind of emotional proximity in the work. It's a constant struggle, the desire to be playful and the desire to communicate on some very stark emotional level.
Everything was always something but something – and here was the rub – could never be everything.
war character generations
We had the great good fortune and shortcomings of character that marked every generation that had never seen war.
believe college colorado-river
Yet for all the depression no one ever quit. When someone quit, we couldn't believe it. 'I'm becoming a rafting instructor on the Colorado River,' they said. 'I'm touring college towns with my garage band.' We were dumbfounded. It was like they were from another planet. Where had they found the derring-do? What would they do about car payments? We got together for going away drinks on their final day and tried to hide our envy while reminding ourselves that we still had the freedom and luxury to shop indiscriminately.
Things could be worse and things could be so much better.
thinking matter want
If you can get by with quotes from The Godfather and nothing you say matters, that's pretty bleak, don't you think? Don't we want what we say to matter?
thinking way courses
You think I alienate myself from society? Of course I alienate myself from society. It’s the only way I know of not being constantly reminded of all the ways I’m alienated from society.
mother children thinking
A child, thought Carl, is not the only result of childbirth. A mother, too, is born. You see them every day--nondescript women with a bulge just above the groin, slightly double-chinned. Perpetually forty. Someone's mother, you think. There is a child somewhere who has made this woman into a mother, and for the sake of the child she has altered her appearance to better play the part.
people irritating-people irritating
It is really irritating to work with irritating people
mother father divorce
I come from a very illustrious line of divorces. We love to get divorced in my family. My mother and father have been married four times each - eight ceremonies with the best of intentions.