Best 76 quotes of Christopher Bollen on MyQuotes

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.

Both my parents were big readers. 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.

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

For me, cultivation of my own style really started by looking at people. There are just some really beautiful people in the world. When you're walking down the street, or you're at a restaurant, someone catches your eye because they have their own look. It goes way beyond what they're wearing-into their mannerisms, the way they smile, or just the way they hold themselves.

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

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 horny 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.

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].

I definitely don't take any of intrusions in my private life personally. You learn how to have a sense of humor pretty quickly. I honestly don't keep up on it unless it's something that would hurt someone else. I can take care of myself, that's not the problem. But it's just not fair to bring anyone else into the picture.

I don't think secrets are a bad thing. I think there's this idea that everything needs to be transparent in order for it to be free.

I feel that I'm solid at description.

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

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

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.

I like change. I've never really had much consistency in my life, you know, from everyday work to my living situation to whether or not I'm going to be in L.A. The one constant thing in my life is my friends and family, which is all I need

I like the idea of the book being wiser than the person who wrote it. None of the novels I've written are direct transcriptions of me blathering over dinner with a glass of wine in my hand. I don't hold any illusion of those conversations being of particular value. The books, though, are - I hope - bigger than my opinions, investigations that go beyond my own intellect or wit.

I like to be alone, I mean, I really love to be alone more than anything else, and I don't really like to talk about myself to death, and I don't like to share too much, and I don't really have dreams of extreme fame or even extreme respect.

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.

I'm ultimately not so much of a professor as a progresser. And I'm ready to move away from what I consider to be this weird mid-century dream that I feel pulls us as a country, and us as a culture, backward.

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

I really believe there is something in the nature of a democracy that naturally leads people to distrust the government, to assume because a democracy is built by people just like themselves that there must be secret plots and cover-ups and wizards behind the scenes running the machine.

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

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.

It's always fun to welcome new people into your life. When dating anyone or becoming friends with anyone who has a different profession, a different life, it opens doors. All my friends here do such different creative things. It's so awesome.

It's always surprised me that mainstream America had the good taste to like R.E.M. It doesn't have the digestible quality the general public tends to look for in its favorite musicians.

It's hard for me to figure out where I want to be. But it's definitely in New York. I feel like New York throws different challenges at you and you can be more creative.

It's just as political, what you do in the bedroom is just as political as what you do in public.

It's really hard to write about art in general. But it's exceptionally hard to fictionalize art and make work that isn't a parody, or is something that could withstand critique and exist in the art world as a valuable object, or a true piece.

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

I wanted to reexamine the idea of the album for generations of people who are not my age, who love music or learning about music or are finding this band called R.E.M. or have just previously heard "Losing My Religion" and "Everybody Hurts" as their elevator music. I wanted to present an idea of what an album could be in the age of YouTube and the Internet.

I was a very scared child.

I was never afraid on stage. That's where I was the least afraid. I could just do what I do and I had the amplification and the lights.

I was obsessed with Agatha Christie in sixth grade.

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.

Looking back, [R.E.M.]videos, by in large, have always been art films. I'm thinking of "Losing My Religion." That's a landmark piece.

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.

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

Now we're in an age of singles. It's actually always been more about singles for most of music history.

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

Secrets are never secure because they are always at risk of being found out.

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

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.

The Greeks really believed in history. They believed that the past had consequences and that you might be punished for the sins of your father. America, and particularly New York, runs on the idea that history doesn't matter. There is no history. There is only the never-ending present. You don't even have your family because you moved here to get away from them, so even that idea of personal history has been cut at the knees.

There is a value to moving more slowly through a story.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Today, MTV doesn't play videos anymore, but YouTube certainly has become the next MTV.

To this day I still watch tons of horror.