It has always been something I could do, and it may seem odd that in my case I seem to create an interesting narrative and frustrate the reader's opportunities to follow it at every step.

quote by Harry Mathews
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I thought Cheever was magnificent and that if I could write like him that would be the best I could do. And then I realized that what I really wanted to write had nothing to do with what he was doing.

quote by Harry Mathews
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Well, the great thing for me about poetry is that in good poems the dislocation of words, that is to say, the distance between what they say they're saying and what they are actually saying is at its greatest.

quote by Harry Mathews
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It's true, I had an extremely delicious life, but that was my life at home, and perhaps because I was only a child, or for whatever reasons, I found the company of others, especially other boys, quite terrifying and upsetting.

quote by Harry Mathews
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After the navy, I transferred to Harvard and finished there. I was there the spring term of 1951 and I stayed through the summer term and a whole other year, so I was able to do two years in a little less than a year and a half.

quote by Harry Mathews
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What I wanted to do and what I needed to do was something entirely different, and through reading Roussel I learned that I could do what I wanted all on my own and that I didn't have to rely on what had actually happened in my somewhat limited life and reading.

quote by Harry Mathews
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