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Ruth Ozeki
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The American society around me looked at me and saw Japanese. Then, when I was 19, I went to Japan for the first time. And suddenly - what a shock - I realized I wasn't Japanese; they saw me as American. It was an enormous relief. Now I just appreciate being exactly in the middle.
- Ruth Ozeki
#American
#First Time
#Me
#Society
#Time
Maybe all teenagers feel like they don't fit in. I never felt like a cool kid. I remember being bullied for being Asian.
- Ruth Ozeki
#Being
#Cool
#Feel
#Never
#Remember
For me, writing is a way of thinking. I write in a journal a lot. I'm a very impatient person, so writing and meditation allow me to slow down and watch my mind; they are containers that keep me in place, hold me still.
- Ruth Ozeki
#Me
#Mind
#Slow
#Thinking
#Way
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.
- Ruth Ozeki
#Desk
#Down
#Green
#Sit
#Tea
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.
- Ruth Ozeki
#Always
#Cross
#Edge
#Film
#More
Inspiration comes from everything from the entire world, and it's hard to pinpoint one thing. I can trace one inspiration to the writing of 13th-century Zen master Dogen Zenji, who writes beautifully about time.
- Ruth Ozeki
#Everything
#Hard
#I Can
#Time
#World
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.
- Ruth Ozeki
#Beginning
#Go
#Good
#Spirit
#Start
I think all characters are facets of the writer. In a way, they have to be if you're going to write them convincingly.
- Ruth Ozeki
#Going
#I Think
#Think
#Way
#Writer
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.
- Ruth Ozeki
#Control
#End
#Illusion
#Realize
#Vehicle
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.
- Ruth Ozeki
#Because
#Edge
#Point
#See
#Want
Fiction is an elemental force, which has the power to shape reality in its own image - or images, I should say - because reality, like light, exists not only as a single point or particle, but also as an array of possibilities.
- Ruth Ozeki
#Light
#Possibilities
#Power
#Reality
I am really interested in the way we relate to time. In particular, the way readers and writers talk to each other. Casting your voice out into the future is very beautiful to me.
- Ruth Ozeki
#Beautiful
#Future
#I Am
#Me
#Time
The relationship between reader and writer is reciprocal in a way. We co-create each other. We are constantly emerging out of the relationship we have with others.
- Ruth Ozeki
#Between
#Others
#Out
#Relationship
#Way
People have always heard voices. Sometimes they're called shamans, sometimes they're called mad, and sometimes they're called fiction writers. I always feel lucky that I live in a culture where fiction writing is legal and not seen as pathology.
- Ruth Ozeki
#Culture
#Feel
#Legal
#Live
#People
There's something about Vonnegut's deadpan irony that I really like. And I like Borges' puzzle structure.
- Ruth Ozeki
#About
#Irony
#Like
#Puzzle
#Something
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