Carmen Maria Machado quotes

There's something so dark and weird about what a cliché it is...And it makes art harder because it's like how do I turn this thing that operates on cliché - its life blood is the cliché - and create something interesting from this incredibly dead thing? If you say it's as hot as an oven, your brain skips over the phrase, it's so worn. And that's what makes cliché so dangerous. If you say it enough, you lose your ability to engage with it in any kind of critical capacity. (Carmen Maria Machado)

I usually start from a concept, an idea, a form, a question, or a (sub)genre. Never a character or a setting. And I don't write into nothing; I always have somewhere I'm directing my thoughts.

Carmen Maria Machado