A Quote by Phil Klay

In a strange way, you have to have a certain amount of distance from a thing in order to be able to write about it. — © Phil Klay
In a strange way, you have to have a certain amount of distance from a thing in order to be able to write about it.
I've never been the type of photographer to live with people I photograph. You know, shoot heroin with them, that kind of thing. I respect those photographers that work that way. But part of my personality is a certain amount of distance, and part of my attraction to the medium of photography is this distance where you're in the world, but you're removed from it.
You have a great deal of yourself on the line, writing- your vanity is at stake. You discover a tricky thing about fiction writing; a certain amount of vanity is necessary to be able to do it all, but any vanity above that certain amount is lethal.
I needed to find my way to write. I need about six hours of uninterrupted time in order to produce about two hours of writing, and when I accepted that and found the way to do it, then I was able to write.
What I need in order to stay creative and centered is a certain amount of distance from the maddening crowd. You cease to be your best self if you're running too fast.
In the beginning, because of the Pavement thing, we were able to sell a certain amount of records. We were able to sell not such a great amount of records, but enough to live on. So there was no incentive to do what didn't come naturally.
I find fantasy easier to write. If I'm going to write science fiction, I spend a lot more time thinking up justifications. I can write fantasy without thinking as much. I like to balance things out: a certain amount of fantasy and a certain amount of science fiction.
This fact was something I also learned from this first novel that I needed personal experience to invent, to fantasize, to create fiction, but at the same time I needed some distance, some perspective on this experience in order to feel free enough to manipulate it and to transform it into fiction. If the experience is very close, I feel inhibited. I have never been able to write fiction about something that has happened to me recently. If the closeness of the real reality, of living reality, is to have a persuasive effect on my imagination, I need a distance, a distance in time and in space.
I know we loved each other, but distance can do strange things to people and before I was willing to tell you about it, I wanted to be certain that it would last
I don't wait to be struck by lightning and I don't need certain slants of light in order to be able to write.
I suspect there are two kinds of novelists. Those who have a point of view and have something to say and then write a novel in order to say that thing, and those of us who write the book in order to find out what we think about that thing.
There has to be a certain amount of love just in order for you to survive together. I think a lot of groups have gone down the tubes because they were not able to relate to one another.
There was a time when the FCC tried to require a certain amount of television and media to be educational, a certain amount to be newsworthy and a certain amount of it to be public access.
A beautiful deleveraging balances the three options. In other words, there is a certain amount of austerity, there is a certain amount of debt restructuring, and there is a certain amount of printing of money. When done in the right mix, it isn't dramatic.
I've always written about people who have very abstracted in a certain way. I write about scientists and artists and musicians. I write about people who live in their heads who are very obsessed about a certain set of details in the physical world.
I actually don't know anyone who wants to be famous for fame's sake, at least not anyone I respect. But you need to have a certain amount of power in order to be able to do what you want.
I do feel there is a certain amount of distance and apathy that's created when you feel like there's a distance between you and the other people. So it's very easy to... when you have an app that sets it up where you very clearly swipe somebody's face off of your screen because you don't like the way they look, you're asking people to not appeal to their best selves. You're asking people to be brutal.
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