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Anthony Marra Biography

Anthony Marra is an American fiction writer.

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Anthony Marra Quotes

Invader and invaded held on to their fistfuls of earth, but in the end, the earth outlived the hands that held it.

Hands, Earth, Ends, Invader, Fistfuls

From personal experience, I completely agree that it is often easier to go for monotone sadness. When I was starting out, I wrote a gazillion short stories that ran the gamut of human suffering - drug addiction, child abuse, terminal illness, loved ones dying by all manner of misfortune, etc. In hindsight, it's clear that I mistook the power of the situation for the power of the story.

Addiction, Children, Experience, Ran, Sadness

Life: a constellation of vital phenomena—organization, irritability, movement, growth, reproduction, adaptation.

Adaptation, Growth, Life, Movement, Organization, Vital

For their entire lives, even before they met you, your mother and father held their love for you inside their hearts like an acorn holds an oak tree.

Father, Heart, Like, Mother, Oak

How often is immense sadness mistaken for courage?

Sadness, Often Is, Mistaken, Courage, Immense

There was a time when she had indulged in the hypothetical for hours a day, plotting the map that had led her here. But no life is a line, and hers was an uneven orbit around a dark star, a moth circling a dead bulb, searching for the light it once held.

Stars, Dark, Light, Life, Plotting

The short story that eventually grew into Constellation was the first fiction set in Russia that I'd ever written, and that was right around the time I was giving up on a doomed, never-to-be-seen first novel. While I saw it could be something bigger, in hindsight fortuitous timing was as responsible as anything.

Firsts, Giving Up, Grew, Right, Russia, Short

Entire years had passed when he was rich enough in time to disregard the loose change of a minute, but now he obsessed over each one, this minute, the next minute, the one following, all of which were different terms for the same illusion.

Different, Disregard, Minute, Next, Passed, Years

We all know to feel sympathy for those who've suffered from drug addiction, child abuse, and terminal illness, so the set up elicits an emotional response that the story itself very well may not earn. Energy generated by the fiction itself is likely to produce more light.

Children, Emotional, Light, Likely, Elicits, Drug

It's stupid. There are maps to show you how to get to the place where you want to be but no maps that show you how to get to the time when you want to be.

Maps, Place, Stupid, Time, Want

We twist our souls around each other’s miseries.

Miseries, Misery, Soul, Souls, Twist, Twists

She was fluent in four languages and yet her fists against the rusted hood were the fullest articulation of her defeat.

Articulation, Fists, Fluent, Four, Fullest, Language

But there had to be a quota. An upper limit to the number of miracles one is privileged to in a lifetime. How many times can a beloved reappear?

Lifetime, Miracle, Numbers, Privileged, Quota, Reappear

Sometimes it bursts from your imagination fully formed, sometimes you absorb from nonfiction, sometimes you're able to imprint your own autobiographical experiences on a world you never yourself were a part of. A decent number of the one-liners in the title story originally came up in conversations with my girlfriend or my neighbor.

Experiences, Girlfriend, Imagination, Imprint, Numbers, World

You are mine. I recognize you. We twist our souls around each other's miseries. It is that which makes us family.

Family, Misery, Recognize, Soul, Twist, Twists

Her father was the face of her morning and night, he was everything, so saturating Havaa’s world that she could no more describe him than she could the air.

Morning, Father, Night, Havaas, Face

Happiness came in moments of unpredictable loveliness.

Happiness, Loveliness, Moments, Unpredictable

My work often begins as little internal dares, wondering if I can pull something off. So I spent a few years drawing these stories together, trying to build a Pangea of what began as separate continents.

Continents, Drawing, Pangea, Stories, Trying, Years

We tend to associate humor with lightheartedness, but really, it's a rhetorical mode than can be applied to any subject. It was through researching Chechnya that I came to understand this.

Chechnya, Rhetorical, Subjects, Subject, Associate, Understand

Inside us there is a word we cannot pronounce, and that is who we are.

Pronounce, Who We Are, Word

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