Tea Obreht Quotes
For me it was a lot harder to come to terms with the death of my grandfather than it was to come to terms with what's happened to the former Yugoslavia.
You never know what's going to happen in your life, and you never know what's going to happen in someone else's life either.
death should be celebrated...when you put something in the ground you always know where it is
In the mess of moving from place to place, I skipped two grades in the space of one year.
My road to publishing actually came through a colleague who connected me to my agent, and the faculty at Cornell was very supportive.
When you're in a place, the details you focus on are different than details you focus on when you're writing about it.
In terms of people that I know, my grandmother and my mother are huge influences on my writing life because they are both massively supportive and always have been of my career.
A lot of writers that I know have told me that the first book you write, you write about your childhood, whether you want to or not. It calls you back.
The dead are celebrated. The dead are loved. They give something to the living. Once you put something into the ground, Doctor, you always know where to find it.
At the end of the day, it's about the reader's attachment to and belief in the magical elements that make or break magical realism.
My mother always says that fear and pain are immediate, and that, when they're gone we're left with the concept, but not the true memory.
