Ross Douthat Quotes

I've always looked upon the Ducks as caricature human beings. Perhaps I've been years writing in that middle world that J.R.R. Tolkien describes, and never knew it.

I want to stay in touch with what I have in common with my subjects, with the places where are equally implicated with whatever is wrong with the culture.

'Yellow Face' marks my summation of multiculturalism.

In the past, the U.S. was the centre of the world, where everything was happening. I think my stories have always sought to question this, maybe even criticise it.

Secret families are really the bedrock issue of Western literature.

The real world is the fantasy writer's scrapbook. Real history, real geography, real customs and religions are all invaluable sources of guidance and inspiration.

Under popular culture's obsession with a naive inclusion, everything is O.K.

I am thankful I was born in America, although if I gain any more weight the burqa thing may start to seem like a good idea to me. See? Another plus about America, you can always find some food.

I honestly think anthropology is one of the most useful fields a fantasy writer can study, more so even than history.

By ignoring a lot of American culture you can write more interesting stories. Unfortunately, if you were writing about America as it is, you'd be writing about a lot of people sitting in front of television sets.

'The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears' is very much about America - it just happens to have African and Ethiopian characters, and in fact, it happens to have more characters who are not Ethiopian than who are.

I think a lot of Indians want Indian artists to be cultural cheerleaders rather than cultural investigators.

Religion triggers a lot of emotions in me, most of which stem from being raised Jewish in a very Baptist community in the South. I didn't believe any of it from an early age - the clubby quality of whatever religion or church you belonged to, Judaism included. It just struck me as foolish.

We used to play the underground clubs like the UFO, and Middle Earth, and they were great because they would have on things like a poet, string quartets, and then a rock band! It was kinda cool!

There's guilt about our treatment of native peoples in modern intellectual life, and an unwillingness to acknowledge there could be anything good about Western culture.

One might enumerate the items of high civilization, as it exists in other countries, which are absent from the texture of American life, until it should become a wonder to know what was left.

As a writer, I tend to be drawn to marginal people - writers, poet-prophets, seers, eccentrics - who embody the deeper ambivalences of their societies and bear deeper witness to their world than the famous figures we are used to celebrating, or demonizing, in our histories.

If you're becoming weary and disillusioned with Australian values, Judeo-Christian values or Western civilisation, I recommend strangers - they're such a glorious, redeeming wilderness to wander into.

New York has been the subject of thousands of books. Every immigrant group has had its saga as has every epoch and social class.

It started getting too crazy with 'Earth A.D.' The concepts started becoming too brutal and violent. It was less about fiction and more about the real world, the past, present, and future. I think a lot of people got freaked out by that.

Movies by Carlos Saura and others had ghosts, memories from the past, that they used to make a political point. Things you couldn't talk about openly, you could speak of through ghosts.

One of the things I've thought about 'Midnight's Children' is that it is a novel which puts a Muslim family at the centre of the Indian experience.

I write about Texas, New York, California and Virginia, and they're all important places in my repertoire.

I really respect and admire Tolkien. I think he was the most honest of the Romantics.

I don't feel any sense of prioritizing white evangelicalism.