Adam Haslett famous quotes

It is a negative sort of achievement, she thinks, to have spent a life warding something off.
-- Adam Haslett

#Depression #Thinking #Achievement

Only the luckless, the petty or the deranged [end] up in court.
-- Adam Haslett

#Ends #Court #Deranged

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, finding an etiolated Henry James slumped at the bar in a haze of indecision, and shooting him dead.
-- Adam Haslett

#Bars #Shooting #Indecision

That is much of what I think the writer's job is - to slow people down. 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. Because we are most often distracted from that. Massively distracted.
-- Adam Haslett

#Jobs #Thinking #People

Discovery is the joy.
-- Adam Haslett

#Discovery #Joy

You have to expose part of yourself to create a character deep enough for readers to care about. 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. So I suppose the answer is I see myself in all my characters, in their best moments and in their worst.
-- Adam Haslett

#Character #Trying #Answers

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

#Jobs #Judging #Reader

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

#Character #Judging #Mind

We live in a bureaucratic, atomized world, but the system is still run by human beings. 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

#Running #Responsibility #Thinking

You largely constructed your depression. It wasn't given to you. Therefore, you can deconstruct it.

Among writers, if you don't have a therapist, it's like saying you don't keep a journal or use the thesaurus. It's a natural accompaniment.

Listen to the people who love you. Believe that they are worth living for even when you don't believe it. Seek out the memories depression takes away and project them into the future. Be brave; be strong; take your pills. Exercise because it's good for you even if every step weighs a thousand pounds. Eat when food itself disgusts you. Reason with yourself when you have lost your reason.

Our God has boundless resources. The only limit is in us. Our asking, our thinking, our praying are too small. Our expectations are too limited.

Far better to think historically, to remember the lessons of the past. Thus, far better to conceive of power as consisting in part of the knowledge of when not to use all the power you have. Far better to be one who knows that if you reserve the power not to use all your power, you will lead others far more successfully and well.

Some of my academic friends think Ive fallen from a very special grace.

I think I feel rather differently about sympathy to what seems the normal view. I like just to feel it is there, but not always expressed.

The virtue of achievement is victory over oneself. Those who know this can never know defeat.

Be more dedicated to making solid achievements than in running after swift but synthetic happiness

There is, first, the desire for strength, for achievement, for adequacy, for confidence in the face of the world, and for independence and freedom. Secondly, we have what we may call the desire for reputation or prestige