A Quote by Anthony Marra

From personal experience, I completely agree that it is often easier to go for monotone sadness. When I was starting out, I wrote a gazillion short stories that ran the gamut of human suffering - drug addiction, child abuse, terminal illness, loved ones dying by all manner of misfortune, etc. In hindsight, it's clear that I mistook the power of the situation for the power of the story.

Anthony Marra

Quote Topics

Abuse Addiction Agree Child Child Abuse Clear Drug Drug Addict Drug Addiction Dying Easier Etc Experience Go Hindsight Human Human Suffering Illness Loved Loved One Loved Ones Manner Misfortune Often Out Personal Personal Experience Power Ran Sadness Short Short Stories Situation Starting Starting Out Stories Story Suffering Terminal Terminal Illness Wrote

Quote Author

Anthony Marra
American - Writer

We all know to feel sympathy for those who've suffered from drug addiction, child abuse, and terminal illness, so the set up elicits an emotional response that the story itself very well may not earn. Energy generated by the fiction itself is likely to produce more light.

Anthony Marra

[T]he truth is that drug addicts have a disease. It only takes a short time in the streets to realize that out-of-control addiction is a medical problem, not a form of recreational or criminal behavior. And the more society treats drug addiction as a crime, the more money drug dealers will make "relieving" the suffering of the addicts.

Jay-Z

We all have somebody in our lives, that however closely related or not, is affected by terminal illness and these amazing nurses, who often work through the night with people, not only suffering from a terminal illness but their families, they're just extraordinary people.

Mel Giedroyc

The most personal thing I've put in [Touch of Evil] is my hatred of the abuse of police power. It's better to see a murderer go free than for a policeman to abuse his power.

Orson Welles

The abuse of power that seems to create the most unhappiness is when a person uses personal power to get ahead without regards to the welfare of others, or when power is used to go into the lower dimensional planes.

Frederick Lenz

Rob Horton, the main character of The Tiger Rising, was a secondary character in an adult short story I wrote, and he wouldn't go away after I'd finished the short story. I couldn't figure out what he wanted, so I wrote to find out.

Kate DiCamillo

It seemed that the problem of Americans overdosing and dying from drug addiction was being described as bad people, particularly kids, who were abusing good drugs. But Sheila Nevins, the president of HBO Documentary Films, and I were particularly interested in finding out the stories of people and families who had been ravaged by this disease of addiction and understanding what really was happening. What we found was that, and let's not make any mistake about it, this is an epidemic of addiction.

Perri Peltz

So often we have this image of what drug addiction looks like, and it's not fun. Our loved ones who go down that path are in pain.

David Sheff

Sometimes we are tempted to be that kind of Christian who keeps the Lord’s wounds at arm’s length. Yet Jesus wants us to touch human misery, to touch the suffering flesh of others. He hopes that we will stop looking for those personal or communal niches which shelter us from the maelstrom of human misfortune and instead enter into the reality of other people’s lives and know the power of tenderness. Whenever we do so, our lives become wonderfully complicated and we experience intensely what it is to be a people, to be part of a people.

Pope Francis

A poison can hardly be called safe if for some reason specific to me it's ineffective against, say, my body. But the power of story on the human mind is such that anecdote is often more persuasive than numbers. That's why news stories often concretize the impact of a change in government policy by following the story of one person.

Zia Haider Rahman

You can write when you're dyslexic, you just can't read it. But I started writing short stories as a child and I found the short story format a real nice one. I love short stories and I love short documentaries or short films of any kind.

Billy Bob Thornton

We have power... Our power isn’t in a political system, or a religious system, or in an economic system, or in a military system; these are authoritarian systems... they have power... but it’s not reality. The power of our intelligence, individually or collectively IS the power; this is the power that any industrial ruling class truly fears: clear coherent human beings.

John Trudell

I believe strongly that when you have political capital, you should use it in a manner that helps improve the human condition. You shouldn't just compile power and hold onto power for power's sake.

Kevin de Leon

Another California study counted 30,000 substance abusers who are pregnant are White woman. So, The Wire paints the picture of drug addiction, drug dealing, and drug abuse as being a specifically a Black issue.

Ishmael Reed

Addiction is a very compelling subject for literature - especially now that it's nearly impossible to come out of adult experience without some addiction - to substances, sure, but also to love, sex, success, failure, power.

Porochista Khakpour

Suffering begins when you mentally label a situation as bad. That causes an emotional contraction. When you let it be, without naming it, enormous power is available to you. The contraction cuts you off from that power, the power of life itself.

Eckhart Tolle

A Quote by Anthony Marra

Quote Topics

Quote Author

Related Quotes

Related Authors