Ruth Ozeki

“When I start writing these novels, I go into them with a spirit of inquiry rather than to substantiate prejudices I had in the beginning. If you don't do that, you can't write good characters.”

“For a writer, you definitely do not want to be in the mainstream. You want to be on the edge because that's where the vantage point is. That's where you can see.”

“How much can you really trust the promise of a suicidal farther?”

“It costs so much to make films. With a novel, you can write the whole thing on a ream of paper from Staples for $4.”

“An unfinished book. left unattended, turns feral, and she would need all her focus, will and ruthless determination to tame it again.”

“When I'm writing a novel, which is what I like to write, I get up early, sit zazen, make a pot of green tea. I wear wrist cuffs to keep my wrists warm and minimize irritation from extended contact with the surface of my desk. I sit down and write.”

“How much can you really trust the promise of a suicidal father?”

“I think all characters are facets of the writer. In a way, they have to be if you're going to write them convincingly.”

“Writing is solitary. You spend so much time alone and in your own mind, telling stories.”

“In my heart, I am American, and I believe I have a free will and can take charge of my own destiny.”

“Otaku (おた) is also a formal way of saying "you". た means "house", and with the honorific お, it literally means "your honorable house", implying that you are less of a person and more of a place, fixed in space and contained under a roof. Makes sense that the stereotype of the modern otaku is a shut-in, an obsessed loner and social isolate who rarely leaves his house.”

“When I'm writing a novel, I'm usually just trying to write about things that are interesting to me.”

“What is it that frightens us about a "novel of causes", and conversely, does fiction have to exist in some suspended, apolitical landscape in order to be literary? Can it not politically and temporally specific and still be in good literary taste? We are leery of literature that smacks of the polemic, instructional, or prescriptive, and I guess rightly so--it's a drag to be lectured to--but what does that imply about our attitudes towards intellectual inquiry? While I enjoy reading kitchen-table novels in which characters are distilled to their emotional essence and their lives stripped of politics and commerce, it simply is not reflective of my experience. I see our lives as being a part of an enormous web of interconnected spheres, where the workings of the larger social, political, and corporate machinery impact something as private and intimate as the descent of an egg through a woman's fallopian tube. This is the resonance I want to conjure in my books.I want to write novels that engage the emotions and the intellect, and that means going head to head with the chaos of evils and issues that threaten to overpower us all. And if they threaten to overpower the characters, then I have to make the characters stronger.”

“As I bathe myselfI pray with all beingsthat we can purify body and mindand clean ourselves inside and out.”

“Canada has always been a great place for literature. It's strong and growing stronger, and there will always be reading, and there will always be great writers.”

“True freedom comes from being unknown.”

“There's so much to write. Where should I start?I texted my old Jiko this question, and she wrote me back this:'You should start where you are”

“Do all kids have to worry about their parents’ mental health? The way society is set up, parents are supposed to be the grown-up ones and look after the kids, but a lot of times it’s the other way around.”

“I've always played that edge of fact and fiction. I used to be a filmmaker, and certainly in film that's a line that filmmakers cross more readily and more easily than novelists.”

“When I write fiction, I have the illusion of being able to control these fictional worlds and these characters, and to make them say what I want them to say. Of course, the problem is that it is an illusion, and by the end of it you realize that you're not in control of it at all; the characters have taken over, and they're driving the vehicle.”