Anyone Quote by Matt de la Pena

“Once I got into college, I discovered literature - in particular, multicultural literature. I just started to understand the power of story and narrative, and you know, like anyone else, I kind of wanted to do it, too.” quote by Matt de la Pena — Download Open image

“Once I got into college, I discovered literature - in particular, multicultural literature. I just started to understand the power of story and narrative, and you know, like anyone else, I kind of wanted to do it, too.”

Matt de la Pena

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More by Matt de la Pena

As an author, you go into the school, it gets written about in the paper. It sucks that your book was banned, but you…

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Whenever I teach writing I tell them to never revise as you go. Finish the first draft. This is my writing advice. I can't…

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When you first quit your regular job and you become a full-time writer, you are paralyzed with free time. You have so much free time. When you are at home, you have a guitar. There's a cat. You got to find ways to create an environment when writing is like going to work. Be efficient with the hours you put…

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I think the world sort of looks to the kids who have potential. These are the kids who are going to do something with…

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I think we all try to figure out ways to ignore the fact that life is about suffering. In the modern world, that's what we're surrounded with. We have all these little tools, such as phones and the Internet, to help us forget about suffering. Whenever you are tired, you don't have to really sit in the abyss of what…

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Growing up as a mixed-race kid myself, when you are in the middle of it and you're young...you don't think about it consciously. It's…

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A lot of people think that they are really cool because they don't outline. In my writing group, they would say, "I will never outline. I let the characters take me." C'mon, man - I outline the story, but it's only like one page. It's a list of possible reversals in the story, like things where everything will just change…

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The second book, which was probably more from a professional standpoint - when I read Junot Díaz's Drown, I was like, Oh my god, you can write these stories and people will actually read them beyond your own little community. This guy's book is blowing up and it seems like [he's writing about] the neighborhood that I grew up in.…

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When I was young, I grew up in a family of working-class people. Not just my parents, but my extended family, as well.

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The feeling it gave me was an odd combination of weightless self-pity and excitement. I understood my life was meaningless, and this knowledge freed…

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When I finish a book, I'll go to that file and look through them. And I'll say, these are three that really excite me…

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When I'm following what a character does in a book I don't have to think about my own life. Where I am. Why I'm here. My moms and my brother and my old man. I can just think about the character's life and try and figure out what's gonna happen. Plus when you're in a group home you pretty much…

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