Literary Birthday – 23 February – Joseph O’Neill

Joseph O’Neill Quotes

1. If what you want to do is write, then it’s madness not to do it.
2. The greater the novel, the more it is apt to embody the special, non-replicable properties of the written medium.
3. We are in the realm not of logic but of wistfulness, and I must maintain that wistfulness is a respectable, serious condition. How, otherwise, to account for much of one’s life?
4. Novel-writing is a bit like deception. You lie as little as you possibly can.
5. I certainly want to continue to write in a way that’s intimate. I love books where you feel you’re having a romance with the writer.
6. Publication is almost certainly a punishment for having written a book.

Joseph O’Neill is an Irish novelist and non-fiction writer. O’Neill is the author of five novels. Netherland was awarded the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. The Dog was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction, named a Notable Book of 2014 by The New York Times, and shortlisted for the Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction. His most recent novel, Godwin was a Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and shortlisted for the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award. He is a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Written Arts at Bard College.

Source for image: Larry D. Moore, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Joseph_oneill_2010.jpg

by Amanda Patterson

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