Steve Erickson Quotes

I never think of my audience when I write a poem. I try to write out of whatever is haunting me; in order for a poem to feel authentic, I have to feel I'm treading on very dangerous ground, which can mean that the resulting revelations may prove hurtful to other people. The time for thinking about that kind of guilt or any collective sense of responsibility, however, occurs much later in the creative process, after the poem is finished.

If you're doing your job properly, you take the risk of feeling slightly foolish and delve in and bring out the emotions.

Most of us start from that position of irony now and what I wanted to do - really felt like I had to do if I was going to write another novel - was move towards something like sincerity.

Sorrow makes for sincerity, I think.

Sadness is the matrix from which wit and irony spring; sadness is uncomfortable and creative, which is why consumer society cannot tolerate it.

I did not believe political directives could be successfully applied to creative writing . . . not to poetry or fiction, which to be valid had to express as truthfully as possible the individual emotions and reactions of the writer.

When did "sentimental" become a pejorative barb? I do not at all share the notion that a piece of music, or a poem, or a film that bypasses the brain and aims straight for the heart . . . should automatically be heaped with scorn. I think it is symptomatic of a sad and dangerous impoverishment of spirit.

Goddamn it, FEELING is what I like in art, not CRAFTINESS and the hiding of feelings.

The aim is to burn through to first thoughts, to the place where energy is unobstructed by social politeness or the internal censor, to the place where you are writing what you mind actually sees and feels, not what it thinks it should see or feel.

I think the book is less emotional than the film. With the film, the emotions are much more raw and in front. In the book, they are kind of ironized and seen through comedy.

Having an authentic emotional response is always a positive thing.

It depends on the story and the filmmaker. And it depends on the character, and the heart and soul of the person that I see on the page, and if it resonates with something that I think I can summon in myself.

There's a truth to the fact that it's hard to be real. It's easy to be indulgent. It's easy to be bubble gum, but it's hard to find a real thing that really makes your soul tick. It's painful and honest. It can be more challenging than just a sad song.

We must laugh and cry, enjoy and suffer, in a word, vibrate to our full capacity … I think that’s what being really human means.

I think that the very earliest influence was a horror of having to work in a bank or an office, a desire for a free and creative life.

I think it is really important to be in some way provocative -- either intellectually or viscerally -- in the films one makes.

I think we're past the time in history where you have to come out and say, "I'm happy all the time! I'm a joker! I'm a crazy man!" I think people understand that I can turn that switch on but that I'm also a sensitive, normal human being with feelings and I know how to express those too.

I think that becoming a parent absolutely changes your entire life and certainly changes your work, and it has changed mine. It just allows you to have access to your emotions, even more than you already did. You're watching this little person grow in front of you, and you realize that you're seeing how precious life is and how quickly it goes. You get to things faster, even emotionally. I'm not as timid about reaching into some areas in myself and bringing that to my work.

I basically enjoy doing films that are about something, that have complex roles that I can sink my teeth into. Basically, I gravitate to things that scare me. They might be things that I don't think I know how to play. I like trying to find within me where this character may exist. Whether is it is a fictional character or not I am not motivated by that. It is more about how challenging it is. It is just so happens that the more high profile things I have done have been historical characters.

I do explore the emotion every once in a while. I'd like to think you don't stop being creative once you get happy. My ultimate goal is to end up being happy. Most of the time.

Objectifying your own novel while writing it never really helps. Instead, I guess while you're writing you need to think: This is the novel I want to write. And when you're done you need to think: This is what the novel I wanted to write feels like and reads like and looks like. Other people might call it sweeping or small, but it's the book you chose.

The line between true self and feigned self is blurred on all sides. Which I think is a rather handy metaphor for falling in love.

I feel that whatever virtues the novel may have are very much connected with the limitations you mention. I am not writing a conventional novel, and I think that the quality of the novel I write will derive precisely from the peculiarity or aloneness, if you will, of the experience I write from.

I sometimes think novelists write about sex in order to avoid boring themselves to death.