Literary Birthday – 17 January – Suzanne Berne

Happy Birthday, Suzanne Berne, born 17 January 1961.

Five Quotes

  1. In my experience, people’s sorrows are always in danger of bursting out; it’s only through careful inattention that they can be contained.
  2. ‘Where do you get your ideas?’ people are always asking authors they admire, which I’ve always thought was another way of asking, ‘How did you get my ideas, which I didn’t know I had until you put words to them?’
  3. Perhaps so many contemporary American writers write about modern middle-class families because a lot of us belong to that group ourselves and we’re immersed in its complexities and contradictions. Novelists also like to focus on characters who are at risk in some way, and I’d say right now the modern, middle-class American family seems quite at risk. Especially when it comes to aspirations.
  4. I like the idea of being part of a literary heritage – it’s like chiming in on a long and involved conversation.
  5. When I’m working on a novel, I’m not aware of following any sort of literary tradition – to me, the story seems genre-less, its own entity, which allows for the most freedom when it comes to creating characters and situations.

Suzanne Berne is an American writer. Her novel, A Crime in the Neighborhood, won the Orange Prize for Fiction. She is also the author of A Perfect Arrangement, The Ghost at the Table, and Missing Lucile.

Source for quotes

by Amanda Patterson

Please click here for our Literary Birthday Calendar

Posted on: 17th January 2018
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