Alexi Zentner Quotes

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.
Ezekiel Boone's books, starting with 'The Hatching' series, are meant to be big, sprawling, smart, entertaining books that are fun above all else; the literary novels written under my real name, Alexi Zentner, are certainly a little more quiet.
For 'The Lobster Kings,' I listened to a lot of Johnny Cash. And it makes its way into the book.
Growing up in Waterloo, the Governor General's Award wasn't something I even thought to wish for.
I believe that art elevates humanity. I feel incredibly privileged to be part of that.
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.
I grew up reading thrillers, science fiction, fantasy - you name it - and one day I asked myself if there was a reason why a fear of spiders was so common. Was there something buried deep in our evolutionary history that made being scared of spiders a survival instinct?
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.'
I liked Shakespeare in high school, but in university I spent a semester studying in London, and it was sort of in the middle of me falling deeply in love with literature, and I took a Shakespeare course with a professor who couldn't imagine anything more important than Shakespeare.
I liked the idea of being a writer more than I liked the idea of writing.
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.
I started writing 'The Lobster Kings' the day after I sold my first novel, 'Touch.'
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.
I'm absolutely terrified of spiders.
I've said many times that there only two things to write about: love and death. And when you have children, you remember that the world is full of sharp corners and dangerous things, and suddenly you have these small, soft creatures, which you love in almost painful way.
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.
If you don't try your hardest, and you're unsuccessful, you always have that excuse.
If you realize early what your influence is, you can have a better understanding of what you are writing about.
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?
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.
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