Thinking Quotes by Steve Erickson

Steve Erickson

I think for the foreseeable future we have to disabuse ourselves of any ideas of unifying, or coming together, or all getting along. I don’t think we’re going to reconcile the America that elected the first African American president with the America that just elected a president avidly endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan – I’m not sure I even want to reconcile the two.

Ku Klux Klan

Thinking

Two

Steve Erickson

I think most novelists I know, certainly including me, feel the novels choose them rather than vice-versa.

Novelists

Thinking

Vices

Steve Erickson

In LA, you think you’re making something up, but it’s making you up.

Thinking

Steve Erickson

In my early twenties the nature of conservatism itself changed. When I identified as a fourteen-year-old conservative, it was closer to what we today think of as libertarianism – conservatism, at least for me, had been defined by Jeffersonian credos like “the best governed are the least governed” and “I have sworn eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man” that were very idealistic and romantic to a kid.

Kids

Men

Thinking

Steve Erickson

In terms of America, I think any profound consideration is bound to return us to the notion of twins because, though you certainly can contend there are many Americas, our history has been binary from the beginning, with its hairline fracture down the country’s center between what American has wanted to be and what America has been. That fracture is slavery, of course. To some extent it’s still slavery, in that collectively we refuse to come to grips with the American fact of slavery.

America

Country

Thinking

Steve Erickson

Obviously cheap sentimentality isn’t something any good novelist wants to traffic in, but I think it’s a problem if you consider it to be the most egregious of all creative sins. I think it’s a problem if you consider it the thing to be avoided at all cost. I think it’s a problem of you’re not willing to risk the consequences of that kind of emotionalism under any circumstances. Then you wind up in the cul-de-sac of irony.

Creative

Thinking

Wind

Steve Erickson

Out of the house and on my own, I faced the fact I didn’t much like who I was. I didn’t like my judgmentalism; I didn’t like my absolutism. I didn’t like my repression of natural empathy, my pinched lack of emotional generosity. How I had been thinking politically had less to do with what was wrong with the world and more to do with what was wrong with me, with my fears and insecurities, failings, weaknesses.

Emotional

Generosity

Thinking

Steve Erickson

While a particularly deft sense of irony may be one of the tools of great storytellers, I think it’s also true that if irony serves as a retreat from an emotional engagement that you’re overly concerned is uncool, that’s a failure of nerve.

Emotional

Nerves

Thinking

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Acknowledge

America

Answers

Approach

Becoming

Believe

Book

Calling

Century

Character

Color

Congratulations

Connections

Country

Creating

Creative

Culture

Diagrams

Difficult

Dream

Emotional

Ends

Essence

Expression

Fiction

Firsts

Gay

Generosity

Government

Gun

Hands

Hearing

Ideas

Ifs

Imagine

Ink

Inspiration

Instinct

Justice

Kids

Ku Klux Klan

Lasts

Long

Made

Materials

May

Mean

Memories

Men

My Own

Natural

Needs

Nerves

Not Interested

Notion

Novel

Novelists

Opposites

Order

Pages

Parent

People

Philosophical

Phones

Play

Reason

Records

Rights

Rip

Sake

Secret

Self

Sex

Shadow

Smart

Sometimes

Stories

Strong

Swim

Taste

These Days

Thinking

Today

Two

Vices

Voting

Want

War

Water

Way

Western Music

White

White Man

Wife

Wind

Wings

Writing

Thinking Quotes by Steve Erickson

I think most novelists I know, certainly including me, feel the novels choose them rather than vice-versa.

In LA, you think you’re making something up, but it’s making you up.

While a particularly deft sense of irony may be one of the tools of great storytellers, I think it’s also true that if irony serves as a retreat from an emotional engagement that you’re overly concerned is uncool, that’s a failure of nerve.

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