John Kessel Quotes

I've always thought of absurdism as a French fad I'd like to belong to.

But if I were to say who influenced me most, then I'd say Franz Kafka. And his works were always anchored in the Central European region.

I like Halldor Laxness and Machado de Assis - people who try to understand the human condition by looking at intimate pictures of human life.

One of the influences of Kafka over later writers is not so much in the content of his work as in its form.

To say that such-and-such a circumstance is 'Kafkaesque' is to admit to the denigration of an imagination that has burned a hole in what we take to be modernism - even in what we take to be the ordinary fabric and intent of language. Nothing is like 'The Hunger Artist.' Nothing is like 'The Metamorphosis.'

I've been wrestling with Kafka since I was an adolescent. I think he's a great aphorist, a great letter writer, a great diarist, a great short story writer, and a great novelist - I'd put novelist last.

Kafka's inevitable tropism for the allegorical puts him in marked opposition to the realism that dominated the literary world of the first half of the 20th century.

As 'Possession' progresses, it seems less and less like the usual satire about academia and more like something by Jorge Luis Borges.

I did my dissertation on Kafka.

All theatre is absurd.

My main ambition as a teenager was to somehow resurrect the dark-minded writer Franz Kafka and become his girlfriend.

I like going absurd pretty quickly. You don't waste any time when you're doing theater of the ridiculous.

I love Victorian novels, the way they capture the nuances of the human condition.

There is in Albert Camus’ literary craftsmanship a seductive intelligence that could almost make a reader dismiss his philosophical intentions if he had not insisted on making them so clear.

Look at 'Batman' - that was theater of the absurd, as is 'Family Guy.'

'Wonder Showzen' is one of my favorite shows of all time. When I first saw it, I thought it was so funny and new and original and edgy and insane and subversive. I didn't know comedy could do that. It redefined what I thought you could do with a TV show.

We grew up on Harold Pinter, Sam Shepard, Samuel Beckett. You're making something about men on the verge of a nervous breakdown, you're going to look to those guys.

Sometimes, I read that I'm this leftwing comic who just goes on about politics the whole time. Other times, I read that it's just surreal nonsense about crisps. It's both of those.

As I considered Parker and his absurdist reflection in the Westlake-authored 'Dortmunder' novels, I wrote, 'His natural ability to observe human behavior and to follow an idea, no matter how bizarre, through to its proper, rightful finish echoed the vision of an architect.'

The essential gesture of the contemporary novel is to get people to turn the page, to entertain them, and I hate that. I want a novel where the gesture is towards existential investigation on every page. That, to me, is thrilling.

The book says, 'Vanity Fair - a story without a hero.' Becky is effectively the protagonist, the hero we follow. But she is flawed. Becky is a subject of her own time.

Literature has become too psychological.

BoJack Horseman' would make sense in the world of 'Rick and Morty,' but it's hard to imagine Rick and Morty in the world of BoJack.

God, people say 'Black Mirror' was horrible - it's nothing compared to the stuff that happens in 'Grimms' Fairy Tales.' It's mind-bending.

'The Lobster' is very particular, and we did need to create a very specific world with specific rules so the whole premise would work.