A Quote by Andrew Sean Greer

For writers: don't hold back. Be weird. Be sentimental. Be melodramatic. Take the risk of being not-cool, not-hip.

Andrew Sean Greer

Quote Topics

Back Being Cool Hip Hold Risk Sentimental Take Weird Writers

Quote Author

Andrew Sean Greer
American - Novelist
Born: 1970

I think a lot of writing, or a lot of young writers, especially, hold themselves back unnecessarily because they're so upset about the idea that they might be sentimental or so concerned about being criticized that way or even being that way that they just shy away from any strong expression or emotion.

Mary Gaitskill

To laugh is to risk appearing a fool. To weep is to risk appearing sentimental. To reach out to another is to risk involvement. To expose feelings is to risk exposing your true self. To place your ideas and dreams before a crowd is to risk their loss. To love is to risk not being loved in return. To hope is to risk pain. To try is to risk failure. But risks must be taken, because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.

William Arthur Ward

To laugh is to risk appearing a fool, to weep is to risk appearing too sentimental, to reach out for another is to risk involvement, and to expose feelings is to risk exposing one's true self.

Leo Buscaglia

Some of the hip-hop stuff people get into is exciting, because there's a passion and there's something to explain to a more mainstream audience, so you get these passionate writers who want to express their love for rap and hip-hop, which is cool.

Cameron Crowe

Portland is often trumpeted as being one of America's coolest, hippest cities. I've been to Portland many times, and I'm always like, "Yeah it's cool and hip, but also, where are all the black people? Why is this city so cool and hip, and also keeping the black people away?"

W. Kamau Bell

The big occurrences in life, the serious ones, have for me always been nearly impossible to recognize because they never feel big or serious. In the moment, you have to pee, your arm itches, or what people are saying strikes you as melodramatic or sentimental, and it's hard not to smirk. You have a sense of what this type of situation should be like - for one thing, all-consuming - and this isn't it. But then you look back, and it was that; it did happen.

Curtis Sittenfeld

I jabbered too much in class about all the Russian writers whom I admired for being, among other things, uncouth and somewhat humorously melodramatic, such as Gogol and Dostoyevsky, just as it was in my own household when I was growing up.

Richard Elman

The church seeks to help form people who can risk being peaceful in a violent world, risk being kind in a competitive world, risk being faithful in an age of cynicism, risk being gentle among those who admire the tough, risk love when it may not be returned, because we have the confidence that in Christ we have been reborn into a new reality.

John Howard Yoder

You take the risk of being rejected. If you have pretentions to be an artist of any kind, you have to take the risk of people rejecting you and thinking you're an arsehole.

Roger Waters

Awkwardness gives me great comfort. I've never been cool, but I've felt cool. I've been in the cool place, but I wasn't really cool - I was trying to pass for hip or cool. It's the awkwardness that's nice.

Marc Jacobs

I grew up around hip-hop so I didn't think it was about being cool or being black or being white or whatever.

Chad Hugo

It's football. You take weird hits. That's what you prepare for in the offseason so your body can take all those weird hits and you can get right back up.

George Kittle

Throughout my trading career, I have continually witnessed examples of other people that I have known being ruined by a failure to respect risk. If you don’t take a hard look at risk, it will take you.

Larry Hite

The fact was, by the time she got to high school, being weird and proud of it was an asset. Suddenly cool, Blue could've happily had any number of friends. And she had tried. But the problem with being weird was that everyone else was 'normal'".

Maggie Stiefvater

In my work, and in my psyche, there's some very sentimental, traditional, conventional side that's always in argument with a more radical, sarcastic side. Some of my stories are really sentimental, but they're layered over with weird, satirical stuff.