Christopher Bollen famous quotes

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

#Veterinarian #Wanted

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

#Country #Loss #Cities

To this day I still watch tons of horror.
-- Christopher Bollen

#Watches #Horror #Stills

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.
-- Christopher Bollen

#Valentine #Coal #Killers

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.
-- Christopher Bollen

#Parent #Watches #Tvs

I was a very scared child.
-- Christopher Bollen

#Children #Scared

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

#New York #Doors #Half

I had been going out to Orient for several years.
-- Christopher Bollen

#Years #Going Out

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

#Character #Talking #Brain

I feel that I'm solid at description.
-- Christopher Bollen

#Description #Feels

It is a little out of touch to presume that someone wants to follow your every observation and insight over the course of hundreds of pages without any sort of payoff. That's why writing isn't a one-way street. You have to give something back: an interesting plot, a surprise, a laugh, a moment of tenderness, a mystery for the reader to piece together.
-- Christopher Bollen

#Writing #Giving #Laughing

I've never even done a residency.
-- Christopher Bollen

#Done

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

#Writing #Vacation #Trying

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

#Escapism

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

#Wings #Mentor #Wanted

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

#Artist #Generations #Lost

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

#School #Way #Graduates

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

#School #Artist #Talking

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

#Literature #Orphan #Figures

Both my parents were big readers.
-- Christopher Bollen

#Parent #Bigs #Reader

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. That's where I trace the familial line of murder mystery obsession.
-- Christopher Bollen

#Mother #Dad #Book

I would stay at my grandma's house on my birthday every year and I remember she had a bookshelf of murder mystery books along with really frightening books, like one on Jack the Ripper. She also had a poster of a shark in the closet which also terrified me at the time.
-- Christopher Bollen

#Book #Grandma #Sharks

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

#Girl #Terror

There is a value to moving more slowly through a story.
-- Christopher Bollen

#Moving #Stories #Values

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.
-- Christopher Bollen

#Morning #Book #Writing

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

#Writing #Helping #Cigarette

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

#Book #Writing #One Day

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.
-- Christopher Bollen

#Games #Creating #Stories

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.
-- Christopher Bollen

#Writing #Trying #Stories

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.
-- Christopher Bollen

#Motivation #Games #Tennis

I also remember when I watched Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer [1990] at, like, age 15. That scared the crap out of me. Because it didn't operate inside the usual conventions of the horror genre in the way that I could accept. I can accept ***** teenager counselors being murdered at camp. But I couldn't accept the derangement of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, which was that anyone could be murdered at any moment - whole families, with no build-up music and no meaning. It terrified me.
-- Christopher Bollen

#Teenager #Horny #Serial Killer

I was obsessed with Agatha Christie in sixth grade.
-- Christopher Bollen

#Obsessed #Sixth Grade #Grades

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.
-- Christopher Bollen

#Wall #Kids #Murder

As much as I adore Agatha Christie - and I think people make this claim about murder mysteries in general - it's often a very conservative mode of storytelling. Usually it's the greedy, climbing, new-money slimeball who wants to take from the aristocracy.
-- Christopher Bollen

#Thinking #Climbing #People

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].
-- Christopher Bollen

#Book #Interesting #Shining

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

#Hands #Aesthetic

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

#Running

There's a great scene in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre [1974] that I'm obsessed with: Sally is being chased by Leatherface with a chainsaw. And she runs into thorn bushes. And she's getting tangled up in it because she's running fast. But Sally needs to move slowly in order to get through the bushes - she will get farther faster by going slowly because her hair and clothes won't get tangled and caught. There's something really beautiful about understanding that, while someone's chasing you with a chainsaw, you have to move more slowly in order to get away.
-- Christopher Bollen

#Beautiful #Running #Moving