57 Quotes by Tea Obreht

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.

When I hit a block, regardless of what I am writing, what the subject matter is, or what’s going on in the plot, I go back and I read Pablo Neruda’s poetry. I don’t actually speak Spanish, so I read it translation. But I always go back to Neruda. I don’t know why, but it calms me, calms my brain.

I do no writing while I’m in Belgrade visiting my grandma.

We’re all entitled to our superstitions.

Being taken seriously, for a young writer, is a wonderful form of encouragement, but at the same time, I don’t think one should ever feel like attempting a kind of artistic endeavor is beyond your scope just because of age or inexperience.

Kelly Link’s prose is conveyed in details so startling and fine that you work up a sweat just waiting for the next sentence to land. This is why we read, crave, need, can’t live without short stories.

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.

At the end of the day, despite all the other great things that literature does in society and in a person’s life, I think that we read to escape. And I think that place, more than anything, provides that escape quickly, if an author is engaged with the place.

I’ve always written about animals. I’m still trying to process why that is.