Michael On
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Michael On
taken greatness games
All literature, highbrow or low, from the Aeneid onward, is fan fiction....Through parody and pastiche, allusion and homage, retelling and reimagining the stories that were told before us and that we have come of age loving--amateurs--we proceed, seeking out the blank places in the map that our favorite writers, in their greatness and negligence, have left for us, hoping to pass on to our own readers--should we be lucky enough to find any--some of the pleasure that we ourselves have taken in the stuff that we love: to get in on the game. All novels are sequels; influence is bliss.
influence bliss novel
All novels are sequels; influence is bliss.
shoes squash fire
Not only would I never want to belong to any club that would have me for a member--if elected I would wear street shoes onto the squash court and set fire to the ballroom curtains.
mistake writing firsts
When I finish a first draft, it's always just as much of a mess as it's always been. I still make the same mistakes every time.
lonely writing solitude
When I'm writing solitude feels very good. But when I'm not writing it feels lonely... Having a big family solves that problem.
mistake writing thinking
I don't think you could teach someone to be a genius, but you can certainly teach them to not make rookie mistakes and to look at writing the way a writer looks at writing, and not just the way a reader looks at writing. There are a lot of techniques and skills that can be taught that will be helpful to anybody, no matter how gifted they are, and I think writing programs can be very good for people.
falling-in-love men entering
I’m a man who falls in love so easily, and with such reckless lack of consideration for the consequences of my actions, that from the very first instant of entering into a marriage I become, almost by definition, an adulterer.
wings firsts would-be
I thought, I fanced, that in a moment, I would be standing on nothing at all, and for the first time in my life, I needed the wings none of us has.
editors ideas wife
I was surprised that my wife thought it was a good idea, then again with my agent, another woman, then my editor, another woman - in spite of the fact that all three of them reacted positively I still have this fear.
stories world stuff
Rueful, bittersweet, funny, written with tenderness and bite, Merrill Feitell's stories, like so many classic short stories, are made from the plain and painful stuff of this world, and haunted by the possibility, and the impossibility, of a better one.
cities light rooms
He took a step toward her, than another, tentatively, gathering all his strength, as though about to throw a heavy switch that would, if his calculations were correct, bring light to a hundred cities and ten thousand darkened rooms. He was going to ask her to dance - that was all.
taken mean airports
I don't have a problem with many uses of the word genre, just certain ones. I have the most trouble when these labels are used to prevent discussion, to prevent a work from being taken seriously as literature. When we say "genre," we generally mean "something crappy," something that would be sold in an airport.
were-meant-to-be world prison
The world like our heads was meant to be escaped from, they are prisons world and head alike.
scary delight scar
So it was scary, but that's how it goes. To my great delight, I discovered that it did all belong.