On “Outside Is the Ocean”: An Interview with Matthew Lansburgh
“Writing is, in many ways, an act of faith. You have to believe in yourself. You have to work towards a goal that may, at first, seem inaccessible and far-fetched.”
“Writing is, in many ways, an act of faith. You have to believe in yourself. You have to work towards a goal that may, at first, seem inaccessible and far-fetched.”
“Music, the visual arts, and, predominantly, the writing of books have all been enduring interests, and the arrangement of these essays — long, brief, long, brief, long — is meant to mirror those concerns.”
“Jealousy requires an act of looking, and my characters spend a lot of time looking at what others have—or anyway, what they think others have—and sometimes making not-so-great decisions based on that misguided idea.”
“I suppose I realized I was working toward a book when I asked myself, How close can you get to an extinct bird? And then, I set out to try. My journey of combing through museums and specimen drawers was what ultimately spurred the longer narrative. Once I held an extinct bird skin in my hands, I knew I had to start sounding some alarms about our own environmental crises.”
If one doesn’t like an article enough to finish it, fine, but why not move on?