Adam Haslett Quotes

That is much of what I think the writer’s job is – to slow people down.
ADAM HASLETT

Job Much People Slow Think Thinking Writer
Finding an etiolated Henry James slumped at the bar in a haze of indecision, and shooting him dead.
ADAM HASLETT

Bar Dead Etiolated Finding Haze Indecision Jame Shooting Slumped
If the history of the American sentence were a John Ford movie, its second act would conclude with the young Ernest Hemingway walking into a saloon
ADAM HASLETT

Bar Conclude Country Indecision John Ford Movie Sentence Shooting
Only the luckless, the petty or the deranged [end] up in court.
ADAM HASLETT

Court Deranged End Luckless Petty
You try not to because it’s hard and at times shameful, but then when you read those pages over and you see they have no life to them so you throw them away and force yourself to be more honest.
ADAM HASLETT

Force Hard Honest Life Page Read Shameful Through Time Yourself
Discovery is the joy.
ADAM HASLETT

Discovery Joy One Liner
So I suppose the answer is I see myself in all my characters, in their best moments and in their worst.
ADAM HASLETT

Answer Best Character Moment Myself Suppose Worst
It is a negative sort of achievement, she thinks, to have spent a life warding something off.
ADAM HASLETT

Achievement Depression Life Negative Something Spent Thinking Warding
If as a writer, you want to capture the world we live in, I think you have some responsibility to at least try to get at some of the ways we’ve chosen to govern ourselves.
ADAM HASLETT

Capture Chosen Govern Live Ourself Responsibility Way World Writer
You have to expose part of yourself to create a character deep enough for readers to care about.
ADAM HASLETT

Answer Character Enough Expose Life Reader Trying
As I see it, my job as a writer isn’t to judge, but to take a reader as far inside as I can and let them dwell there.
ADAM HASLETT

Feeling Inside Job Judge Judging Reader Writer
We live in a bureaucratic, atomized world, but the system is still run by human beings.
ADAM HASLETT

Atomized Bureaucratic Human Being Responsibility Running Thinking World
To give them the chance to notice the passage of time as experienced by others as a reminder of what it is like to be alive.
ADAM HASLETT

Alive Chance Experienced Notice Passage Reminder Time
Because we are most often distracted from that. Massively distracted.
ADAM HASLETT

Distracted Experience Job Massively Most Often People
My interest is always to get as deeply as I can into the minds and spirits of the characters and let the readers empathize or judge as they will.
ADAM HASLETT

Always Character Deeply Empathize Interest Judge Judging Mind Reader Spirit

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