Joe Meno Quotes

I wrote my first novel and my second novel in Chicago. It was the place where I became a writer. It's my favorite city.

People love talking about writers as storytellers, but I hate being called that: it suggests I got it from my grandmother or something, when my writing really comes out of silence. If a storyteller came up to me, I'd run away.

I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to say something about home.

Definitely they write themselves. It's an amazing experience. It's like the characters have come alive and are sitting on my shoulder talking to me, telling me their tales.

Forget market or publishers or whatever. Just write with fire and joy, and in my own experience, those are the stories of mine people have wanted to read.

But when I go to Chicago, I know I'm home.

The thing about Chicago is that it really isn't like any other place. The architecture and the layout of the city are the best. I'm from the Midwest, and consider myself a Midwesterner. I feel most at home there. I love California. I have great friends in California. I just have always considered Illinois to be home.

There are two kinds of writers; the great ones who can give you truths, and the lessor ones, who can only give you themselves.

My most successful books, the ones that I feel the strongest about, are the ones that started with a premise that for me was deeply emotional.

Suddenly, the idea of writing a book was like coming home. I didn't tell anyone except my wife, Clare. I just began.

While I've lived in L.A. since 1985, I'll always consider Chicago my home town and have much affection for it. My parents and sister still live there so I try to visit as often as I'm able.

Chicago is home for me.

Chicago is everything to me.

I never want to lose sight of my roots... A lot of artists want the riches and the fame. I want to tell stories you can put into the context of your life.

Chicago is my home. And the way Chicago sounds will always be a part of who I am.

I make no promises every book will be about Chicago, but it's so inspiring. It's a city of such contradictions. I love to write about it.

There are fragments of me in all my characters.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that writing is mysterious; you don't ever truly know where it is coming from, so don't edit yourself line by line. Don't get in your own way. Whatever is truly there at the core, that is your voice.

Writing at home and then going out into the world to talk about why books matter to me feeds the writing. It's a good mix. It provides balance.

I used to read about people who'd say, 'I dream my books, and then I write them down.' And I was like, 'Oh, please.'

I think 'Dark Blue' came to me while I was doing a project in London. I read it, and the character immediately popped out at me.

I always tell people, I never get writer's block because it's coming straight from my brain, like, real-life experiences. I'm like the news. I'm just reporting it for myself.

The process is different for every book, but there are similarities. I always draw from the inside out. I don't plot them ahead of time, and I'm always surprised by things that happen in my books.

As long as there's a strong theme that I can identify with, that's what makes me interested in writing.

In a way, there's nothing new under the sun, so anything you write about has been written about by other people. All you can do is bring yourself to it, bring as much honesty as you can to it.