George Murray Quotes

#1. I'm not interested in being easy anymore. Readable, yes. Easy, no.

George Murray

#2. In fact, in some ways, I actually feel much more confident about the quality of Carousel than I do about The Cottage Builder's Letter: probably because of its cohesive nature.

George Murray

#3. I do try to let what is obviously unintended yet naturally good stay in.

George Murray

#4. The poetry community here has been extraordinarily welcoming.

George Murray

#5. I think, for me, humour needs to be used like a strong spice - sparingly.

George Murray

#6. I still write the occasional short story, and poked at a novel once, but it's just not what I want to do.

George Murray

#7. Humour is a fine line to walk in poetry, as in fiction. I just think it's harder to write. It's harder to keep the respect of the reader too.

George Murray

#8. I no longer feel pressure to produce fiction.

George Murray

#9. I think the main influence has been living in New York City. Aside from all the crap around 9/11, I find it very demanding to think amid all the noise and visual pollution.

George Murray

#10. I am certainly suffering from a modicum of performance anxiety.

George Murray

#11. I suppress the vast majority of what I write.

George Murray

#12. I wanted to rock back and forth between myth and distant futures, yesterday, today, and tomorrow. It felt a bit like prophecy and a bit like storytelling.

George Murray

#13. Well, we all start thinking we're going to be Romantic rock stars, but then reality hits and you realize no one reads you but other poets.

George Murray

#14. I was writing notes, but not composing poems. The Hunter began to develop out of this fragmented process.

George Murray

#15. It's a bit of a crapshoot out there with young writers right now anyway.

George Murray

#16. A sequence works in a way a collection never can.

George Murray

#17. I've often entertained paranoid suspicions about my fridge and what it's been doing to my poetry when I'm not looking, but I never even considered that my fan was thinking about me.

George Murray

#18. Then I discovered I loved writing poetry more than fiction.

George Murray

#19. In my opinion, Al Moritz may be the best poet of his generation in Canada.

George Murray

#20. I guess there is also an element of deliberate change involved. Each of my books has been, at least from my point of view, radically different from the last.

George Murray

#21. With 'Carousel' I had an idea and it all came out quickly.

George Murray

#22. I am still interested in the long or serial poem, but have written a few smaller things. I may start sending to journals again in a year or so ... that's about it.

George Murray

#23. I feel as though I've fooled the world into thinking I'm an adult and now they're letting me procreate.

George Murray

#24. My self-editing process is intense.

George Murray

#25. The whole competition thing disturbs me. Not that I wasn't a part of it when I first started.

George Murray

#26. New York was breaking my concentration and disintegrating my thoughts.

George Murray

#27. Even the people who have had success and made money writing these books of fiction seem to feel the need to pretend it's no big deal, or part of a natural progression from poetry to fiction, but often it's really just about the money, the perceived prestige.

George Murray