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Home
Authors
Rick Moody
American
Novelist
About the author
I turned forty, and I'm finally going to get married and maybe have a kid.
Rick Moody,
American
Novelist
It's also true, however, that having conquered the regional writer ghetto, I am now intent on conquering the nationalist writer ghetto and moving out into the world more.
Rick Moody,
American
Novelist
#Now
#World
#Writer
Writing the book was itself a process of concealing and revealing.
Rick Moody,
American
Novelist
#Writing
When prose gets too stylized and out of control - and Stein is sometimes a good example - when you don't know what the hell is going on, then it's kind of boring.
Rick Moody,
American
Novelist
#Hell
#Prose
#Control
#Example
What genre it falls under is only of interest later.
Rick Moody,
American
Novelist
#Interest
This is odd, but there are certain things that are really embarrassing to talk about - one is my job and the success that I've had in it, and the other is money.
Rick Moody,
American
Novelist
#Talk
#Success
#Money
#Job
The process of composition, messing around with paragraphs and trying to make really good prose, is hardwired into my personality.
Rick Moody,
American
Novelist
#Prose
#Trying
#Personality
The point is to balance on the edge between musicality and content.
Rick Moody,
American
Novelist
#Balance
#Content
The Ice Storm, because of the movie, has had, or is to have, a vigorous life in other cultures.
Rick Moody,
American
Novelist
#Life
So while it is true that I find really dark stuff funny sometimes, it's also true that as a writer of books I want to have the whole range of human emotions.
Rick Moody,
American
Novelist
#Want
#Books
#Writer
#Emotions
#Funny
Nonfiction that uses novelistic devices and strategies to shape the work. That's material that I really like.
Rick Moody,
American
Novelist
#Work
My grandfather was a newspaper publisher and his paper had all the comics in NYC, so some of my earliest memories are of reading the family paper and heading straight for the comics insert.
Rick Moody,
American
Novelist
#Family
#Reading
#Memories
My contention is that that style is just as stylized as an ornate style.
Rick Moody,
American
Novelist
#Style
#Contention
I made this list of stuff that it's time for me to try to do.
Rick Moody,
American
Novelist
#Time
Literature precedes genre.
Rick Moody,
American
Novelist
#Literature
I judged about a zillion awards this year so I've been reading a lot of books that just came out.
Rick Moody,
American
Novelist
#Books
#Reading
#Awards
But that incessant drive to be out there in the literary universe that was important to me when I was in my twenties, like going to a Paris Review party or whatever, that seems totally irrelevant now.
Rick Moody,
American
Novelist
#Now
#Universe
#Literary
#Party
#Paris
Genre is a bookstore problem, not a literary problem.
Rick Moody,
American
Novelist
#Literary
I always wanted to write something illustrated, and the Details strip finally gave me the opportunity.
Rick Moody,
American
Novelist
#Opportunity
I am in Boston right now, in fact, to do work at the New England Historical Genealogical Library, where I'm trying to finish up tracing my lineage back to the seventeenth century.
Rick Moody,
American
Novelist
#Right
#Now
#Work
#Trying
#Boston
#EnglFact
Maybe when I'm sixty-five I'll talk about my literary life.
Rick Moody,
American
Novelist
#Talk
#Life
#Literary
I have worked really hard to defy categorization, to break down a taxonomy whenever it comes my way.
Rick Moody,
American
Novelist
All the stuff that I used to treat with contempt - you know, I'm an artist, man, I don't do that family stuff - has begun to seem really important.
Rick Moody,
American
Novelist
#Family
#Man
#Artist
#Contempt
I love comic books and always did as a kid.
Rick Moody,
American
Novelist
#Love
#Books
I suppose I should say that I treasure blasphemy, as a faith of the highest order.
Rick Moody,
American
Novelist
#Faith
#Order
#Treasure
I'm trying to make sure that there's comedy as well as sadness. It makes the sadness more memorable.
Rick Moody,
American
Novelist
#Trying
#Comedy
#Sadness
I'm trying to read more dead people because I keep having to read stuff for juries and so forth.
Rick Moody,
American
Novelist
#People
#Trying
Impotence, fetishism, bisexuality, and bondage are all facts of life, and our fiction should reflect that.
Rick Moody,
American
Novelist
#Life
#Facts
#Fiction
It turns out that my memory is just not that great, so for specific scenes with people doing stuff, sometimes I'd have the details all wrong or I couldn't remember what happened exactly, so I just let that be.
Rick Moody,
American
Novelist
#People
#Wrong
#Memory
I didn't know how to kill off a character unless I was able, as a narrator, to get really complicated. Because it was a big deal. I'd never killed a character before.
Rick Moody,
American
Novelist
#Character