Stuff
Marisa Silver Revealed
About Marisa Silver
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What is your birthdate?:4/23
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Previous occupations:Film director
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Favorite job:Writing fiction
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High school and/or college:I went to The Brearley School in New York City and I made it through two years of college at Harvard University.
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Name of your favorite composer or music artist?:Vaughn Williams/Miles Davis
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Favorite movie:The Rules of the Game
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Favorite television show:Mad Men!
Revealing Questions
- Q. How would you describe your life in only 8 words?
- A. funny, serious, grounded, flighty, certain, ambivalent, diligent, lazy
- Q. What is your motto or maxim?
- A. Art can be anything.
- Q. How would you describe perfect happiness?
- A. In so many different ways: hearing my kids' abandoned laughter; watching the colors of a great LA sunset; getting a sentence or a word just right (harder than you think!); listening to an elementary school orchestra performance go amazingly off the rails and then somehow right itself just in time for the final note; the smell of night blooming jasmine, travel, watching another's happiness.
- Q. What’s your greatest fear?
- A. Rats! Those tails!
- Q. If you could be anywhere in the world right now, where would you choose to be?
- A. Staring at any ocean. The endlessness of it makes me imagine.
- Q. Which living person do you most admire?
- A. Anyone who is living with incredible deprivation and continues on. That's courage.
- Q. What are your most overused words or phrases?
- A. Unprintable!
- Q. What do you regret most?
- A. Having regrets. They are useless.
- Q. If you could acquire any talent, what would it be?
- A. I'd like to be able to understand what math is about. Why math? Why the sine curve? Why, why, why?
- Q. What is your greatest achievement?
- A. That I have become less judgmental of others.
- Q. What’s your greatest flaw?
- A. The desire to control. Especially as regards kids!
- Q. What’s your best quality?
- A. I'm supportive.
- Q. If you could be any person or thing, who or what would it be?
- A. I'd like to be a mountain.
- Q. What trait is most noticeable about you?
- A. I ask a lot of (too many?) questions
- Q. Who is your favorite fictional hero?
- A. Emma Bovary
- Q. Who is your favorite fictional villain?
- A. Emma Bovary
- Q. What is your biggest pet peeve?
- A. dangling participles, and I don't like curtains. Dangling things, I guess.
- Q. What is your favorite occupation, when you’re not writing?
- A. Reading/day dreaming
- Q. What’s your fantasy profession?
- A. Librarian/professional traveler
- Q. What 3 personal qualities are most important to you?
- A. Kindness, honesty, egalitarianism
- Q. If you could eat only one thing for the rest of your days, what would it be?
- A. Breadandcheese (that's one thing!)
On Books and Writing
- Q. Who are your favorite authors?
- A. William Trevor, William Trevor, William Trevor!
Peter Taylor
Graham Greene
Philip Roth
Alice Munro
Kazuo Ishiguro - Q. What are your 5 favorite books of all time?
- A. A Summons to Memphis
Madame Bovary
Dubliners
The Collected Stories of William Trevor
The Quiet American - Q. Is there a book you love to reread?
- A. Anything by William Trevor/The Great Gatsby
- Q. Do you have one sentence of advice for new writers?
- A. If what you write doesn't surprise you, it won't surprise anyone else.
- Q. What comment do you hear most often from your readers?
- A. Readers often wonder how I get inside of the minds of characters who are nothing like me.
