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 Read Quote
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 invent it completely for yourself. Philipp Meyer Read Quote
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 Read Quote
If you’re always thinking about someone else’s work, about the tradition you’re working in, how can you possibly make anything good? Philipp Meyer Read Quote
I didn’t know much about Texas when I moved there for graduate school. In my first or second semester, I took a class in life and literature of the Southwest, and that’s where I first heard about these events along the border in 1915-1918, what Anglos called the Bandit Wars. Philipp Meyer Read Quote
Your mind burns a lot of calories. Writing can feel like a physical workout. Philipp Meyer Read Quote
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 Read Quote
We moved to Baltimore, Maryland, in 1979, when I was five. The funny thing is that, even though Baltimore had one of the top murder rates in the country in those days, I grew up hearing about how dangerous New York was. Philipp Meyer Read Quote
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 Read Quote
