Deborah Eisenberg
Deborah Eisenberg
Deborah Eisenbergis an American short-story writer, actress and teacher...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth20 November 1945
CityWinnetka, IL
CountryUnited States of America
consists cutting endless false patience seems useless
For me, most writing consists of siphoning out useless pre-story matter, cutting and cutting and cutting, what seems to be endless rewriting, and what is entailed in all that is patience, and waiting, and false starts, and dead ends, and really, in a way, nerve.
course engaged fascinates given interested people texture
Of course I want to have a deliciously seductive story on the surface which will keep people engaged and amused, but primarily, I'm interested in other things. It's the texture of any given moment that fascinates me: what is really going on between people or in somebody's mind.
anonymity ludicrous york
I actually came to New York because it was very tolerant. You know, it seems preposterous, ludicrous thing to say in an interview, but I came for the anonymity particularly.
absolutely complete curl goal gutter imagine life stay terrified turned whose
For someone whose goal in life was to stay unemployed, I can't imagine what I thought was going to happen. I was so terrified of everything, I just thought I'd curl up in the gutter and die, and by a complete mistake, my life turned out to be absolutely wonderful.
change course facto feels good
Writing does change you, and of course it feels good to do things, so you could say writing is de facto therapeutic. But really, one writes to write.
amount certain deal lives restrict smaller trying
We're all walking around trying to deal with a certain amount of shame, to repress it. And we restrict our mental lives to smaller and smaller areas.
art interested
To be interested in short stories, you have to be interested in fiction as an art form.
experience matter public
The world we live in has been and is being increasingly politicised so that our daily experience is more and more a matter of public policy.
The first story I wrote was called 'Days,' and I have very little affection for it.
amazing
One of the amazing things about writing fiction is that you do get to be other people.
easier easily stories
It's much easier to read the stories that have a lot of dialogue; of course, they flow much more easily into speech.
It's a complicated issue, but I define myself as an American, primarily.
I've never really thought of writing books. I've never thought about stories as a part of a collection.
generally people
I'm not used to interviews. People don't generally interview waitresses.