Clark Blaise Quotes & Sayings

A lot of the Indians who came to North America in the '70s, and who made very successful adjustments, always had an idea of the India that they had left, not realizing that the India that they had left has changed more profoundly than the America they came to. — Clark Blaise

It seems to me psychologically I'm a Canadian. — Clark Blaise

Peggy Atwood, Alice Munro, Hugh Hood, Michael Ondaatje - these are all old friends from my early 20s. — Clark Blaise

India is decidedly not anything that was part of my upbringing or part of my experience or part of my preparation. I really fell into it the way one should fall into it, you know - through love. — Clark Blaise

Writing is what we do. What else could I want in a life partner than someone who knows and shares what I do? — Clark Blaise

Indian standards of artistry, and Indian standards of humanity, and Indian standards of love, and of family, devotion, commitment, stand for me as the standard for how one should behave. — Clark Blaise

Relative to most people I know, I am comfortable just about anywhere. I went to 20 schools before the 8th grade because my father couldn't hold a job. We moved every six months. I had to adjust. — Clark Blaise

India has in fact raced ahead, in ways that are more dazzling and more confusing than America is. — Clark Blaise

If I describe a sunny morning in May (the buds, the wet-winged flies, the warm sun and cool breeze), I am also implying the perishing quality of a morning in May, and a good description of May sets up the possibility of a May disaster. — Clark Blaise

Art, she said, is more nuanced than life. If a teacher is lecturing and looking out of smudged windows, smeared with obscenities (sure enough, ours were) it doesn't mean anything, in life, except that the cleaning crews are lazy. But in a story, if a professor is lecturing and the windows are smudged, we are obliged to think that his words are similarly untrandescent, right? ...
One of the great problems with artists, she said, is that they don't keep nuance and nature distinct. Import raw nature into a story or a poem and you've only ruined a story. Import nuance into life and you'll go mad. There'll suddenly be too much significance everywhere, a message in everything. — Clark Blaise