Jonathan Evison Quotations

Maybe a theme that touches all of my work is people reinventing themselves.

I grew up in the Bay Area until 1976, then I pretty much went all the way through primary and high school on Bainbridge, though like anybody who grows up on an island, I ran the first chance I got.

I write as a matter of need - seven books and God knows how many short stories before anyone published me.

My parents divorced after 25 years of marriage.

Most everything that happens to me in any significant sense finds its way into my fiction.

Too many writers of fiction don't give the reader enough credit.

There are holes in our lives that can never be filled - not really, not ever.

When I started caregiving, I was not on very firm ground. My first marriage had dissolved. I was working at an ice-cream stand in my thirties. I learned that when you don't have anything to give, that's when you really give, and then you get back so much more.

I've been blessed with an optimistic disposition, I think.

So often when we historicize material, we use this big wide-angle lens.

After 20 years of writing in basically a vacuum, I love being part of a community. I've vetted other writers' contracts for them and do publicity for free just because I like a book. Some people think of it as hubris or careerism, but I love to champion books. You can't use your whole sphere of influence just to help yourself.

There're so many great writers out there who aren't getting the exposure they deserve.

For me, an ideal novel is a dialogue between writer and reader, both a collaborative experience and an intimate exchange of emotions and ideas. The reader just might be the most powerful tool in a writer's arsenal.

I'm not in the business of meddling with people's destinies - and yes, my characters are real people to me. They have histories and thoughts and yearnings and hurts and misgivings and pleasures that don't belong to me.

I just need to believe that we're not in some form of stasis, that we can try to be whoever we want to be. We probably won't get there, but we might get a little bit closer, you know?

In writing, I've found, playing it safe and familiar is no way to energize anybody.

I never wanted to be anything but a writer, and I never let go of it.

We are born haunted, he said, his voice weak, but still clear. Haunted by our fathers and mothers and daughters, and by people we don't remember. We are haunted by otherness, by the path not taken, by the life unlived. We are haunted by the changing winds and the ebbing tides of history. And even as our own flame burns brightest, we are haunted by the embers of the first dying fire. But mostly, said Lord Jim, we are haunted by ourselves.

If I walk into a place, a party, say, and there's a bookshelf, I immediately gravitate toward it. Unless there's a bar. But even then, it's only a matter of a few rounds before I make my way to the bookshelf. If there are good books on it, I may never leave the spot all night. Anybody I really want to talk to is going to make his or her way to that bookshelf sooner or later, anyway, right? Books are a nexus. They start conversations, and they continue conversations, and they make people better conversationalists. I have not found this to be the case with Iron Chef, or even alcohol.

It's not easy getting old, you know. Things become a lot less clear.

But once you publish a book, doesn’t it by definition become the realm of public discourse? Otherwise, wouldn’t we just write books and print them out ourselves, and give them to specific people we felt comfortable giving them to–like gifts? Isn’t publishing sort of a social contract?

Reading is, at its best, not an escape; it is genuine experience. A novel is not a monologue, but a conversation, a collaboration between writer and reader, an invaluable exchange of human conditions.

I'll never stop caring. But the thing about caring is, it's inconvenient. Sometimes you've got to give when it makes no sense to at all. Sometimes you've got to give until it hurts.

I know I've lost my mind. But I'm not concerned, because it's the first thing I've lost in a long time that actually feels good.

People really do change. Don't let anyone tell you differently. That the future does not conform to the past is not the exception, but the rule.

Can we really be whoever we want to be, now that we’ve collected all that we are?

My neediness is not a hole to be filled but something beneath the skin scratching to get out.

The Mathematician's Shiva is a brilliant and compelling family saga full of warmth, pathos, history, and humor, not to mention a cast of delightfully quirky characters, and a math lesson or two; all together, a winning equation! When Rojstaczer writes about mathematics, you'd think he was writing about poetry.

Fobbit is fast, razor sharp, and seven kinds of hilarious. Thank you, Mr. Abrams, for the much needed salve--it feels good to finally laugh about Iraq. Fobbit deserves a place alongside Slaughterhouse Five and Catch-22 as one of our great comic novels about the absurdity of war.

I usually write in my underwear, with a space heater running full blast, and three dogs sleeping at me feet.

As a result of manifest destiny, we gutted our resources.

Limited points of view let the writer dispense - and the reader gather - information from various corners of the story. It all becomes a kind of dance, with the writer guiding the reader through the various twists and turns. The challenge is keeping readers in step, while still managing to surprise.

The jocks that used to stuff me into a locker when I was a punk rocker are my best buddies now.

I love being a struggling artist; it makes me feel very alive.

You have to find hope. Hope is such a shape shifter. You tend to look in the rearview mirror for hope, but when its gone, you have to look forward. You have to get in the van and keep driving on.

I really believe in challenging myself, pushing myself to new places.

I discovered John Fante when I was 17 years old - strangely, not through Charles Bukowski, but through William Saroyan, who was his drinking buddy.

You have to smile, if you expect anybody to smile back.

Listen to me: everything you think you know, every relationship you've ever taken for granted, every plan or possibility you've ever hatched, every conceit or endeavor you've ever concocted, can be stripped from you in an instant. Sooner or later, it will happen. So prepare yourself. Be ready not to be ready. Be ready to be brought to your knees and beaten to dust. Because no stable foundation, no act of will, no force of cautious habit will save you from this fact: nothing is indestructible.