Writer Quotes by Laura van den Berg

17 Writer quotes by Laura van den Berg

All Writer quotes Laura van den Berg’s page

Laura van den Berg reflects on the writer’s craft with a blend of curiosity and precision. Across 17 excerpts you’ll sense her keen eye for language and the quiet perseverance that fuels her work.

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I'm such a first-person writer.

Laura van den Berg

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Anxiety and doubt are among my biggest struggles as a writer.

Laura van den Berg

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I've always found the Write-What-You-Know axiom small and stifling.

Laura van den Berg

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I really need so much time to really make headway on a novel that requires me to disappear from the world in…

Laura van den Berg

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Paradoxically, the only thing that helps when I'm feeling despairing about writing is to write.

Laura van den Berg

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I can't write anything if I don't know where it's set, where the events are happening - even if the details of…

Laura van den Berg

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If you're working on a novel, whatever you do, don't say, 'I am almost finished with my novel.' It's worse than chanting…

Laura van den Berg

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In fiction, we are not bound by social convention, so the things that mystify and unsettle are allowed to rise to the…

Laura van den Berg

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If I'm really rolling with a short story, I work on it everywhere and end up with a finished draft in a…

Laura van den Berg

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There's the public self that we present to the outer world. There's the private self, which maybe takes more time to access.…

Laura van den Berg

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It puzzles me when writers say they can't read fiction when they're writing fiction because they don't want to be influenced. I'm…

Laura van den Berg

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Ever since I started writing in college, I have, save for a few short breaks here and there, been working away on…

Laura van den Berg

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It's not easy to craft a novel that gradually erodes the reader's comprehension of the world, of reality and identity and the…

Laura van den Berg

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My students are often asking me, 'What do you think are the most important qualities for a writer?' And one thing I…

Laura van den Berg

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As a young writer, I was sort of sailing around trying to 'find my voice' - for lack of a better term…

Laura van den Berg

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In the world of the American creative writing workshop, I've encountered teachers who are tempted to place, or have actually placed, a…

Laura van den Berg

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Like many American readers, I was first introduced to Magda Szabo's work when New York Review Books reissued the Hungarian master's profound…

Laura van den Berg

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I was born and raised in Orlando, where the economy and culture has been powerfully shaped by tourism, and so I've long been interested…

Laura van den Berg

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I lived in Boston for three years, and during that time, I wrote my first collection of stories, 'What the World Will Look Like…

Laura van den Berg

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I take a pretty expansive view of craft, which is to say I don't see craft as just being technique - it's also process;…

Laura van den Berg

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To me, in general, something that's really rich in terms of identity about transit spaces is that they're so intimate. Especially thinking about long…

Laura van den Berg

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To a certain degree, I think both self-narrativizing and selective memory are essential survival skills.

Laura van den Berg

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There's the public self that we present to the outer world. There's the private self, which maybe takes more time to access. But ultimately,…

Laura van den Berg

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I think my concern is I know my voice, and I know the kinds of landscapes that interest me, so my primary concern is…

Laura van den Berg

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My students are often asking me, 'What do you think are the most important qualities for a writer?' And one thing I always tells…

Laura van den Berg

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As a reader, I appreciate a world that feels unsettled and also visceral, inhabitable, so that's a quality I try and bring to my…

Laura van den Berg

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Youth is such a fascinating and volatile concoction of vulnerability, dependence, restlessness, relentlessness. You're still learning the terms of the world and of the…

Laura van den Berg

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As a genre, the best horror poses central human questions - Who can you trust? What is the cost of our secrets? What is…

Laura van den Berg

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Paradoxically, the only thing that helps when I'm feeling despairing about writing is to write.

Laura van den Berg

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“Over time, we became less sure we were something the other wanted to hold on to.”

Laura van den Berg

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Ever since I started writing in college, I have, save for a few short breaks here and there, been working away on something. I…

Laura van den Berg

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I wager we have a vast amount of literature out there that tends to the stories of men, so I've never really worried too…

Laura van den Berg

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