Quotes by Philipp Meyer

About Philipp Meyer:

Philipp Meyer is an American fiction writer, and is the author of the novels American Rust and The Son, as well as short stories published in McSweeney’s Quarterly, The Iowa Review, and Esquire UK. Meyer is the recipient of a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship. He grew up in Hampden, a blue-collar Baltimore, Maryland, neighborhood often featured in the films of John Waters. His mother is an artist; his father is an electrician turned college biology instructor (Meyer describes them as "counterculture, bohemian intellectuals."). Meyer considers his major literary influences to be "the modernists, basically Woolf, Faulkner, Joyce, Hemingway, Welty, etc."
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

When I dropped out of high school at age 16, I didn't know I was going to become a writer - I just knew I'd never been happy in school, and I had this strong suspicion I'd be happy doing other things.

Philipp Meyer

When I finish a book, I get extremely restless; I have to aggressively find ways to occupy myself; going off into the woods alone, doing things that are physically or mentally demanding to keep myself busy until the next big idea comes.

Philipp Meyer

Nothing prepares you for making art except making art. You have to do it to get better.

Philipp Meyer

I don't think you can be taught how to make art. You can be coached, but on a fundamental level you have to figure it out for yourself. You have to learn how your own mind works, figure out your own relationship to the art; you essentially have to in...

Philipp Meyer

Fundamentally, all art is about human beings. You're always showing larger moral questions through the smaller moral, philosophical, or political choices through one character in the book.

Philipp Meyer

What art and books do at their best is investigate why we are the way we are.

Philipp Meyer

Your mind burns a lot of calories. Writing can feel like a physical workout.

Philipp Meyer

My ideal is to write most of the day, then go running, find friends and socialise all evening; my mind recharges with human contact.

Philipp Meyer

I try to begin writing as close to a dreamlike state as I can get.

Philipp Meyer

Texas was mostly short-grass and tall-grass prairie when modern Europeans arrived here. It really was a land of milk and honey. But when they brought all these cattle onto these relatively small bits of land, and the cattle were allowed to graze free...

Philipp Meyer

I wanted to think about our creation myth; you know, what is the fundamental story that defines America. And it certainly is the West.

Philipp Meyer

I'm interested in getting deep into a person's consciousness and doing so in ways in which the narrator is secondary to the character's own thoughts.

Philipp Meyer

When novels deal in abstractions, they generally go off the rails.

Philipp Meyer

When people grow up in atmospheres of violence or atmospheres of poverty, they don't normally use hi-falutin' language to describe those things. They would describe some brutal event the same way we would describe getting a taxi or missing the bus.

Philipp Meyer

I couldn't understand what was important about school. Dropping out was the first adult decision I made. If I ever have kids, I would hate for them to drop out. But I wasn't a rebel. I never cared to be against school. I just wanted to do what I want...

Philipp Meyer

I like mechanical things; my first book was a mechanics guide - that was what my parents couldn't pry away from me; that was the blanket.

Philipp Meyer

If you've grown up with guns, the thought that someone might take them away makes your stomach churn. They make you feel safe. If you didn't grow up with guns, if you don't know how to use them, then the thought that someone else has them makes your ...

Philipp Meyer

I thought that I would have a huge literary novel coming out when I was, like, 29. I quit my banking job, and I was halfway through my second novel - and I will never publish it, because it's very mediocre.

Philipp Meyer

I just assume that I'll fail at something for several years - that I'll try my hardest and still fail for several years. With writing, that turned out to be wrong. I tried my hardest and failed for about fifteen years.

Philipp Meyer

When you take the fact that you're loved for granted, it frees your mind to go after every other thing there is.

Philipp Meyer

Author Bio

  • NamePhilipp Meyer
  • DescriptionAmerican writer
  • BornMay 1, 1974
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionWriter; Novelist
  • AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship