It's hard enough to make a novel a novel. I wouldn't know how to make it something else at the same time — Matthew Specktor Books Copy Share Image
We go to literature because it shows us some set of humane values. It is showing us how to live. — Matthew Specktor Books Copy Share Image
Great books are written from a sense that there is nothing to lose. — Matthew Specktor Book Copy Share Image
I think the publishing industry is dismayingly like the movie business. It grows more corporate by the day. — Matthew Specktor Business Copy Share Image
Even though I think writers can sometimes thrive from being misread. It can give them something to push off of. — Matthew Specktor Giving Copy Share Image
My parents were very patient with my pretentious little adolescent snobberies. It took me awhile to accept them. — Matthew Specktor Copy Share Image
Good fiction necessarily encompasses our limited understandings of one another, and of ourselves. — Matthew Specktor Fiction Copy Share Image
I was so very interested in literature and so relatively uninterested in the movies when I was a teenager. — Matthew Specktor Books Copy Share Image
A Good Soldier is one of my favorite novels, for various reasons. But the class question is a good one, because it's… — Matthew Specktor Books Copy Share Image
There's a kind of perverseness or betrayal in that idea that art is somehow superior to life. Or that it's more important… — Matthew Specktor Art Copy Share Image
“Even the regular sufferings of fear were better than the ashen grayness of unfeeling, the numbness that had clutched his heart for… — Matthew Specktor Fear Copy Share Image
Hollywood is famous for breeding monsters, and having worked in the business, I've known a lot of them. But only intermittently have… — Matthew Specktor Business Copy Share Image
The 90s were the decade in which studio filmmaking became a much more purely corporatized process, when their crassness ceased to operate… — Matthew Specktor Cinema Copy Share Image
Everybody says, TV is great, the writer has so much power. I'm still trying to convince myself that's true. When do the… — Matthew Specktor Book Copy Share Image
During the 90s, I watched a lot of people getting fat and prosperous, and I thought, culture itself is the casualty of… — Matthew Specktor Copy Share Image
These are the kind of movies that only a real apparatchik, someone who thinks that corporations are people, could love. — Matthew Specktor Corporations Copy Share Image
The '90s were a time when not just the movie business, but every aspect of American life, became a lot more corporate.… — Matthew Specktor American life Copy Share Image
I worked in the mail room at CAA when I was in high school. I worked in the literary department, too. That… — Matthew Specktor After school Copy Share Image
We're a culture that's obsessed with people who make and who squander ridiculous amounts of wealth, which seemed an obsession well worth… — Matthew Specktor Books Copy Share Image
I grew up with such mixed feelings about LA, but I do love it. I grew up lectured by Woody Allen, for… — Matthew Specktor Absurd Copy Share Image
You look at the absolute scorn that gets poured on a fallen celebrity, whether it's Tom Cruise or Lindsay Lohan or Marlon… — Matthew Specktor Absolutes Copy Share Image
Every snotty egotistical teenager thinks they're smarter than the world they crawled out of. It didn't take me so long to grow… — Matthew Specktor Copy Share Image
Jay-Z isn't actually any better than James Joyce even though more people understand him. I'm more interested in what's meaningful within the… — Matthew Specktor Copy Share Image
I heard a story the other night about an editor who visited the Iowa Workshop and, when asked what sorts of books… — Matthew Specktor Book Copy Share Image
It's hard to imagine there's a place for great writing inside a multinational conglomerate. — Matthew Specktor Conglomerate Copy Share Image
I do have complicated feelings about Hollywood, but I also have tremendously affectionate ones. — Matthew Specktor Affectionate Copy Share Image
Sometimes it seems to me that the celebration of a person is really just a prelude to ridicule. — Matthew Specktor Birthday Copy Share Image
I sometimes get asked if I think about film stuff while I'm writing fiction, and the answer is, of course not. — Matthew Specktor Copy Share Image
The novelist is frequently considered to be an impediment. — Matthew Specktor Impediment Copy Share Image
I have very mixed feelings about the movie business, and about Los Angeles in general. — Matthew Specktor Business Copy Share Image
One of the weird things about L.A. is that there's always a set of negative perceptions that attaches itself to this city. — Matthew Specktor Cities Copy Share Image
Much to my surprise, there's a sense for people in the cable industry that fiction writers might actually be good at script… — Matthew Specktor Copy Share Image
My mom was a screenwriter. I saw a lot of people who didn't seem very fulfilled creatively or otherwise by their roles… — Matthew Specktor Copy Share Image
Usually when people say they have mixed feelings about something, it's a sort of euphemistic way of saying they hate it. — Matthew Specktor Feelings Copy Share Image
When I moved to SF in my early 20s, I loved it, but I was absolutely astonished to discover that people there… — Matthew Specktor Copy Share Image
I thought, writing is everything, it's so much more important than this or that. If only I could give that young man… — Matthew Specktor Copy Share Image
I like writing sentences. It's tactile and exciting. Whereas working at the level of the scene is a more cerebral pleasure. — Matthew Specktor Copy Share Image
A lot of talent, a lot of the currency that movies used to have, has spilled over into TV. People talk about… — Matthew Specktor Book Copy Share Image
I've always felt that the basic unit of writing fiction is the sentence, and the basic unit of the screenplay is the… — Matthew Specktor Movie Copy Share Image
