Words matter. These are the best Alexi Zentner Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
I had not expected to ever be in a position to able to say, ‘Hey, see the magazine with J. Lo on the cover? They reviewed my book inside.’
There is no simple answer for what it means to be Canadian. There are a thousand answers that come together. But part of that is that there is a national mythology.
I believe that art elevates humanity. I feel incredibly privileged to be part of that.
There is a huge tension in trying to write with small children because they demand your attention and your time with a fierceness that can be matched by nothing else, but if you are successful in writing while you have small children, I actually think that your writing is likely to be deeper than it was before.
I liked the idea of being a writer more than I liked the idea of writing.
I get very tired of books that feel emotionally empty. I would much rather have writers err on the side of being overly sentimental than not. I think that the perfect balance is a story that moves you without being maudlin, but I don’t enjoy books that are empty of emotion and there’s no connection to the characters.
The worst day of writing is still better than the best day of telemarketing.
For ‘The Lobster Kings,’ I listened to a lot of Johnny Cash. And it makes its way into the book.
As much as I love my daughters, I wasn’t happy with only being a stay-at-home-dad, and my wife encouraged me to try, to really try, at being a writer. More than anything, I didn’t want to let her down.
There’s very little that’s comparable to seeing the spark in a student’s face when she gets something that she’s been struggling with.
If you take a cold, blunt view of most religions, and you sort of say, ‘Well, here’s the basis for it,’ most of them sound crazy. It’s the belief that makes them real. I was interested in that question: When does a belief become a myth? When does something you believe in become just a story?
I’m absolutely terrified of spiders.
I started writing ‘The Lobster Kings’ the day after I sold my first novel, ‘Touch.’
If you don’t try your hardest, and you’re unsuccessful, you always have that excuse.
My daughters are both funny and smart and lots of fun. They play lacrosse, soccer, musical instruments, like to cook with me, and are naturals in the swimming pool. Honestly, though, what I like doing most with them is eating. I’ve worked really hard to make sure they are willing to try all sorts of different foods.
While Shakespeare wasn’t the first voice in the room, in North America and Europe, he’s one of the loudest voices.
Growing up in Waterloo, the Governor General’s Award wasn’t something I even thought to wish for.
To map the Governor General’s Award is to map both the past and the future of Canadian literature, and to be nominated for my first book is wonderful.
If I think of a reader while I am writing, the only reader who really matters for me is my wife. It’s most important to me that she likes what I write.
I love teaching creative writing, and I think I’m good at it, but in a different life, I could have been teaching elementary school.
My children have stolen my dreams in a very literal sense. I’ve lost months in the minutes and hours that Sabine and Zoey have needed me at night, their thin, butterfly-beating hearts pushed against me in the darkness.
I think so much of young adult literature sort of gets ghettoized – the title ‘young adult’ makes people immediately discount it. And just like with books that get written for adults, there is plenty of young adult literature that is bad. But there is also plenty of young adult literature that is brilliant.
