I think a writer is a describer. She describes society and human nature as she sees it. She has to be both typical of that society and alone within it. – Amity Gaige
In the best writers, the outward-reaching interest in the ‘found subject’ leads back at a hairpin to some uncomfortable inner recognition that the writer has journeyed very far to see; he comes home half-dead. – Amity Gaige
Reading while I’m writing ideally inspires my competitive side. When I read great writers, I want to be a better writer. – Amity Gaige
I think novels are profoundly autobiographical. If writers deny that, they are lying. Or if it’s really true, then I think it’s a mistake. – Amity Gaige
Other than a short article I read in 2008 when the real story broke, I have not followed the Clark Rockefeller case, and ‘Schroder’ is not a novelization of that story. – Amity Gaige
Nobody writes like Nabokov; nobody ever will. What I would give to write one sentence like Vladimir! – Amity Gaige
Reading ‘Blood Will Out,’ one begins to understand how so many people were duped by Clark Rockefeller. All the imposter needs is some kind of initial agreement that he is who he says he is; thereafter, consensus builds via a network of human relationships. – Amity Gaige
I think marriage and family keeps being written about because that’s where we keep our reputations with ourselves – I mean, we can’t quite slip the truths we reveal about ourselves at home. – Amity Gaige
I love writing letters. In order to write a novel in first person, I think I needed an addressee. – Amity Gaige
I wanted – and still want – to tell my mother’s story. She fled Stalin’s army in 1944, leaving Latvia, which was to be occupied by the Soviets for the next 50 years, and arrived to the U.S. when she was 11. – Amity Gaige
I do think, in general, children are so perceptive, and they watch and they get so much, and that’s wonderful. And it’s also difficult for them because they see so much, but they don’t understand. – Amity Gaige
For several years before I began ‘The Folded World,’ I worked at an urban college campus and had a job in a tutoring center, and people would come into the tutoring center, and for some reason, they just kept telling me their life stories. – Amity Gaige
Edan Lepucki sets her debut novel, ‘California,’ somewhere in the 2060s. The nearness of this era helps make her vision both more discomfiting and more credible. – Amity Gaige
I researched children’s rights, divorce law, and parental kidnapping. Millions of children and parents are touched by the inadequacy of the legal system to deal with the human heart. – Amity Gaige
I certainly want people to like my writing, but I know that if I write with the intention of trying to please people, the writing will not be good because it will not be authentic. So, ironically, I have to be willing to write something strange or unlovable in order to write anything truly good. – Amity Gaige
I think I have a very American desire and willingness to divulge everything. I would divulge more if I didn’t know it wasn’t smart. – Amity Gaige
Several paranoid suspicions occurred to me, the worst of which was that my whole identity was merely a patched-together set of behaviors designed to keep my parents joined to each other – the repertoire of tricks of a small but intelligent dog. – Amity Gaige
To me, self-esteem is not self-love. It is self-acknowledgment, as in recognizing and accepting who you are. – Amity Gaige
Parenthood is a psychic sweat lodge: enter into it only if you are ready to have your own secreted toxins running into your eyes. Few people are prepared for its power – women or men. – Amity Gaige
I was born on an even keel. Family lore says I never cried, even at birth. I felt at ease on earth, in the right place. And like many children, I took comfort in life’s regularity: Every few days it rained, the school bus came and went, and my parents were rooted in their union. – Amity Gaige
