Christopher Bollen Quotes

It's always surprised me that mainstream America had the good taste to like R.E.M. It doesn't have the digestible quality the general public tends to look for in its favorite musicians.

The first horror movie I saw, in first or second grade, was My Bloody Valentine [1981], where there's a deranged killer in a miner mask stalking a small coal town.

When you create a fence, you keep people out, but you also limit your mobility.

I have always wanted to be either a cinematographer or a veterinarian.

I was never afraid on stage. That's where I was the least afraid. I could just do what I do and I had the amplification and the lights.

There's a structure to a detective story that I can easily understand. I understand playing that particular game. It's like solving a puzzle. Or creating a puzzle.

I've never even done a residency.

I'm convinced I was the only kid ever who had a Death on the Nile [1978] movie poster and a Murder on the Orient Express [1974] movie poster on his bedroom walls.

My strength is character. I'm pretty good at building walking-talking humans with brains like beehives.

I feel that I'm solid at description.

I smoke cigarettes when I write, which is disgusting, but it really helps me.

Every time I try to write on vacation, I fail miserably.

I had been going out to Orient for several years.

I had lived in New York since 1996, sometimes in the worst neighborhoods, without even locking my door half the time.

I was a very scared child.

My parents were great parents, but for some bizarre reason they allowed me to watch whatever I wanted on TV, we had cable. And I constantly watched horror movies.

To this day I still watch tons of horror.

Going out into the country after living in the city is a loss of control.

There's something about fear and aesthetic that go hand in hand.

The death drive is parasitic. It runs off of other drives, leeching off of them.

Why I love chess and tennis - the volleying aspect, and the fact that your competitors' reactions and motivations and bluffs come into the game itself.

I just think, as writers, especially with a book that takes years to write, you sort of wake up every morning hoping and praying that you can make it work for the day.

I have to say I do read partly for escapism. Why can't I escape and learn something?

I was obsessed with Agatha Christie in sixth grade.

We lost so many talented artists and writers from the generations before ours that we're really lacking older figureheads.

I also wonder why is it that so many of the movies and books that are detective stories are also the most aesthetically interesting? From Hollywood noirs to horror movies like The Shining [1980].

It's just as political, what you do in the bedroom is just as political as what you do in public.

I'm really much better at asking questions than answering them, since asking questions is like a constant deflection of oneself.

We've come under the influence of television, where in all honesty we can follow a show that could just get cancelled midway through the season and the entire plotline never resolves itself.

Now we're in an age of singles. It's actually always been more about singles for most of music history.

Today, MTV doesn't play videos anymore, but YouTube certainly has become the next MTV.

You find when you're writing a detective story that you're actually not trying to solve anything. You're trying to stop the reader from solving the puzzle.

I've never had a mentor. I've always wanted one. I'm actually really disappointed that nobody took my under their wing.

Looking back, [R.E.M.]videos, by in large, have always been art films. I'm thinking of "Losing My Religion." That's a landmark piece.

There is a value to moving more slowly through a story.

There's also something sexual about watching the nubile girl in terror. But you do take on her fear as your own.

Both my parents were big readers. My dad liked more macho adventure books like Shogun or spy novels. My mother reads murder mysteries. In fact, so does her mother, my grandma.

There is something very romantic about the orphan figure in American literature.

I don't think secrets are a bad thing. I think there's this idea that everything needs to be transparent in order for it to be free.

Secrets are never secure because they are always at risk of being found out.

There are certain moments where artwork might seem like it's part of someone's career - if you really know the art world - , but I did my best to prevent that overlap.

Safety, reputation, their lives, their friends, and their world. Writers typically try to avoid that because it's not expedient.

People aren't doing whodunits anymore.

There seem to be two ways of generating interest from the reader: withholding information or by telling the reader on the first page exactly what's going to happen.

It's hard for me to figure out where I want to be. But it's definitely in New York. I feel like New York throws different challenges at you and you can be more creative.

Talking to all those great writers and artists for the magazine was a form of graduate school for me.

In a lot of ways, work was my graduate school.

One day I want to write a full-on horror book.

You know how hard it is to actually touch the world? To make a mark on it? You die and they bury you in it.

Sometimes it seemed like the whole point of life was not to die the same death as your father.