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Quote by Téa Obreht

“It is as if, having stepped into a room, a man can no longer see the door through which he has come, and so cannot leave.” quote by Téa Obreht — Download Open image

““It is as if, having stepped into a room, a man can no longer see the door through which he has come, and so cannot leave.””

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More by Téa Obreht

“I felt my voice had fallen through and through me, and I couldn't summon it back to tell him or myself anything at all.”

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I grew up in Cyprus and Egypt, these fantastic places I remember fondly.

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Everything necessary to understand my grandfather lies between two stories: the story of the tiger’s wife, and the story of the deathless man. These stories run like secret rivers through all the other stories of his life – of my grandfather’s days in the army; his great love for my grandmother; the years he spent as a surgeon and a…

“People become very upset,' Gavo tells me, 'when they find out they are going to die' . . . 'They behave very strangely,' he says. 'They are suddenly filled with life. Suddenly they want to fight for things, ask questions. They want to throw hot water in your face, or beat you senseless with an umbrella, or hit you in…

“By the time I got to high school, I had learned to be more cautious about revealing my dreams. I was reading—and therefore writing—adventure stories. This was before I’d read Isak Dinesen and Mikhail Bulgakov, before Ernest Hemingway and T. Coraghessan Boyle, before I’d read something and really felt it, when writing was still just a compulsion, and my teen-age…

No matter how grave the secret, how imperative absolute silence, someone would always feel the urge to confess, and an unleashed secret is a…

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“To me, the persistence of my grandfather's rituals meant that he was unchanged, running on discipline and continuance and stoicism. I didn't notice, and…

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At the end of the day, it's about the reader's attachment to and belief in the magical elements that make or break magical realism.

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“I started to feel that nagging sense of shame again, an acute awareness of my own inability to share in his [my grandfather's] optimism.”

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I think the mythology of death really ran away with me when I was very young.

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A lot of writers that I know have told me that the first book you write, you write about your childhood, whether you want…

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When you're in a place, the details you focus on are different than details you focus on when you're writing about it.

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