Kate Christensen

Literary Birthday – 22 August – Kate Christensen

Happy Birthday, Kate Christensen, born 22 August 1962.

Seven Quotes

  1. I’ve always subscribed to the notion that a writer always has something else to say, and the more you write, the more you have to write about, because the act of writing is self-generating.
  2. Writing blog posts is totally freeing in a whole new way for me. I’m not writing it for any editor, and I’m not being paid, so I can say whatever I want.
  3. I have always felt loneliest in the presence of other people. People I can’t connect with. People I feel unseen by. People who make me feel insincere or uncomfortable. For me, loneliness comes from a sense of missing something. I never miss anything when I’m alone.
  4. Read novels. That’s the best way to learn how to write. If you want to be a novelist, read all different kinds of novels.
  5. Writing involves a lot of fear, and discipline is a way to get over your fear, because you just do it.
  6. I think the first sentence is easy to write, but it’s hard to think up. I think I can’t start writing something until I’ve got that first sentence… that is the thing that starts the engine, the key in the ignition. And the last sentence is the sentence that I write toward as I write the whole book. So, in a way, they’re the hardest sentences, but they are also, once you get to them, the easiest.
  7. Often I choose characters who express not my best self, but the sides of me I haven’t developed or haven’t expressed.

Kate Christensen is an American novelist. She won the PEN/Faulkner Award for her fourth novel, The Great Man. Follow her on Twitter: @aquavita

Source for image: Author’s press photo  www.katechristensen.net/about/

by Amanda Patterson

Please click here for our Literary Birthday Calendar

Posted on: 21st August 2017
(3,981 views)