Mark Leyner Quotes
Yo! You’re my dope dealer not my thesis adviser. If I wanted your opinion about my dissertation, I’d have asked for it, Motherfucker!
“Et Tu, Babe” was born out of my absolute certainty that a writer’s life was solitary and insular, and I was happy with that. I love reading and writing, it’s my whole life.
Sometimes I think my purpose is as a saboteur when I'm working with other people, derailing what they're trying to do or taking things to a ludicrous extremity.
One of the things that struck me as unique about Hollywood is that I never had bad meetings. There were all enthusiastic, but meaninglessly enthusiastic.
I think to simply make fun of something isn't particularly interesting. I try to not just do a parody of something or belittle something or disparage something.
I thought of myself as kind of an anarchist all my whole adult life, from the days when I was 15 or 16.
My idea with my work is always to fashion something that's impossible to transpose into any other media.
I'm in that very preliminary stage of wondering how exactly to "pressurize" the novel in some way I've never considered before.
Actually what's worse than a dog's mouth is a cat's mouth. They're not dirtier per se, but they have sharper teeth, so they are much more likely to go deep, should they bite you.
In me, speaking psychologically, there is always an ongoing struggle between my enormously self-regarding, almost delusionally aspirational, Napoleonic personality and a marginalized one.
I dont walk around chuckling all the time. My outlook is very bleak. Its worse than bleak, its apocalyptic.
I guess I can picture things once they're done - I just can't picture actually doing them.
Stand-up comedy had an interesting effect on me in terms of how I started to think about constructing things, because I really loved the interstices, the linkages, or lack thereof.
My work generally tends to be an all-out, 360-degree subversive take on everything, most of all my own notion of myself as a son, father, husband, human being and male in this culture.
I think I'm a shy, self-conscious person who thinks he's being looked at and tries to look okay. Not in a hottie, narcissistic way necessarily.
As far as what I do, my value as a writer is certainly not to try to recapitulate a 19th century form. Certain styles of narrative don't conform to my style of experiencing the world.
I'm fascinated with video games, though I can't really play them. It's definitely an art form that intrigues me to no end, though.
My relationship with my readers is somewhat theatrical. One of the main things I try to do in my work is delight my readers.
I think of memory as a game, that is as something one engages in with a very profound kind of "playfulness."
I can tell from about 20 yards away when someone has a manuscript for me. I can just tell - they have that look.
The interesting thing about something in the back of your mind is that it can travel pretty far back in your mind.
