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Top 80 Alexander Chee Quotes (2025 Update)
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Alexander Chee Quote: “And then she leaned back her head with the faintest smile and, tapping her chin, asked, Are you in love with him, this mystery composer? How can I be? I asked in return. I don’t even know him. Almost every opera is about this, she said, her smile growing. Love before first sight.”

51. “And then she leaned back her head with the faintest smile and, tapping her chin, asked, Are you in love with him, this mystery composer? How can I be? I asked in return. I don’t even know him. Almost every opera is about this, she said, her smile growing. Love before first sight.”

— Alexander Chee

Alexander Chee Quote: “There’s a reason that whenever fascists come to power, the writers are among the first to go to jail.”

52. “There’s a reason that whenever fascists come to power, the writers are among the first to go to jail.”

— Alexander Chee

Alexander Chee Quote: “What would you read to someone who was dying? Annie Dillard had asked our class. She wanted this to be the standard for our work. There, at the memorial service for my friend, I thought of another: Dying, what stories would you tell?”

53. “What would you read to someone who was dying? Annie Dillard had asked our class. She wanted this to be the standard for our work. There, at the memorial service for my friend, I thought of another: Dying, what stories would you tell?”

— Alexander Chee

Alexander Chee Quote: “My mother’s most common childhood memory of me is standing next to me trying to be heard over the voice on the page. I didn’t really commit to writing until I understood that it meant making that happen for someone else.”

54. “My mother’s most common childhood memory of me is standing next to me trying to be heard over the voice on the page. I didn’t really commit to writing until I understood that it meant making that happen for someone else.”

— Alexander Chee

Alexander Chee Quote: “Waiters and escorts both know that indiscretion is a career-ending move. You reveal a secret only if you are never going back again.”

55. “Waiters and escorts both know that indiscretion is a career-ending move. You reveal a secret only if you are never going back again.”

— Alexander Chee

Alexander Chee Quote: “Hate is love on fire, set out to burn like a flare on the side of the road. It says, stop here. Something terrible has happened. Envy is like, the skin you’re in burns. And the salve is someone else’s skin.”

56. “Hate is love on fire, set out to burn like a flare on the side of the road. It says, stop here. Something terrible has happened. Envy is like, the skin you’re in burns. And the salve is someone else’s skin.”

— Alexander Chee

Alexander Chee Quote: “It’s a strange time to teach someone to write stories. But I think it always is. This is just our strange time.”

57. “It’s a strange time to teach someone to write stories. But I think it always is. This is just our strange time.”

— Alexander Chee

Alexander Chee Quote: “Everything is already moving so very fast, but you need a great deal more speed than this to escape the earth’s gravitational pull. Seven miles per second. More fuel, please.”

58. “Everything is already moving so very fast, but you need a great deal more speed than this to escape the earth’s gravitational pull. Seven miles per second. More fuel, please.”

— Alexander Chee

Alexander Chee Quote: “The freedom to imagine that as yet unimaginable work in front of others, moving them to still more action you can’t imagine, that is the point of writing, to me. You may think it is humility to imagine your work doesn’t matter. It isn’t. Much the way you don’t know what a writer will go on to write, you don’t know what a reader, having read you, will do.”

59. “The freedom to imagine that as yet unimaginable work in front of others, moving them to still more action you can’t imagine, that is the point of writing, to me. You may think it is humility to imagine your work doesn’t matter. It isn’t. Much the way you don’t know what a writer will go on to write, you don’t know what a reader, having read you, will do.”

— Alexander Chee

Alexander Chee Quote: “Sorrow seemed to me to be more like a road wound through life.”

60. “Sorrow seemed to me to be more like a road wound through life.”

— Alexander Chee

Alexander Chee Quote: “She wanted only to be feared. I wanted to be feared and loved. I didn’t want everything she had as she stood onstage that night. I wanted more.”

61. “She wanted only to be feared. I wanted to be feared and loved. I didn’t want everything she had as she stood onstage that night. I wanted more.”

— Alexander Chee

Alexander Chee Quote: “The music we are singing has been sung by hundreds of years by boys. I wonder if God expects to hear it rising off the Earth, like the bloom of a perennial flower. Or if it is a standing challenge, for us to come together and sing for him. Eric tells us in the old days of the castrati, elite Italian choristers who gelded themselves to keep their high clear voices. Some boys hold their crotches when that story is told, but I understand. I could want it that badly, to keep a voice.”

62. “The music we are singing has been sung by hundreds of years by boys. I wonder if God expects to hear it rising off the Earth, like the bloom of a perennial flower. Or if it is a standing challenge, for us to come together and sing for him. Eric tells us in the old days of the castrati, elite Italian choristers who gelded themselves to keep their high clear voices. Some boys hold their crotches when that story is told, but I understand. I could want it that badly, to keep a voice.”

— Alexander Chee

Alexander Chee Quote: “A singer learned her roles for life – your repertoire was a library of fates held close, like the gowns in this closet, yours until your voice failed.”

63. “A singer learned her roles for life – your repertoire was a library of fates held close, like the gowns in this closet, yours until your voice failed.”

— Alexander Chee

Alexander Chee Quote: “That afternoon, I tried to understand if I had made a choice about what to write. But instead it seemed to me if anyone had made a choice, the novel had, choosing me like I was a door and walking through me out into the world.”

64. “That afternoon, I tried to understand if I had made a choice about what to write. But instead it seemed to me if anyone had made a choice, the novel had, choosing me like I was a door and walking through me out into the world.”

— Alexander Chee

Alexander Chee Quote: “There was a question I wanted answered more than I wanted anything else, and it could take my life to answer it. This question was What could I be? This was what I wanted to know.”

65. “There was a question I wanted answered more than I wanted anything else, and it could take my life to answer it. This question was What could I be? This was what I wanted to know.”

— Alexander Chee

Alexander Chee Quote: “I wanted to lead my students to another world, one where people value writing and art more than war, and yet I knew and I know that the only thing that matters is to make that world here. There is no other world. This is the only world we are in. This revisable country, so difficult to change, to easily changed.”

66. “I wanted to lead my students to another world, one where people value writing and art more than war, and yet I knew and I know that the only thing that matters is to make that world here. There is no other world. This is the only world we are in. This revisable country, so difficult to change, to easily changed.”

— Alexander Chee

Alexander Chee Quote: “It was such a hard thing, this virtue, it seemed to me. Keeping it was like having to grip the knife by the blade and defend yourself with the hilt. Ever since I’d been old enough to know about virtue in a woman, it had seemed like a bull’s-eye painted on my head in rouge. I was sure, as I was led away, I would be better off without it. It was better to be done with it and be gone.”

67. “It was such a hard thing, this virtue, it seemed to me. Keeping it was like having to grip the knife by the blade and defend yourself with the hilt. Ever since I’d been old enough to know about virtue in a woman, it had seemed like a bull’s-eye painted on my head in rouge. I was sure, as I was led away, I would be better off without it. It was better to be done with it and be gone.”

— Alexander Chee

Alexander Chee Quote: “My first novel was not the first one I started. It was the first one I finished.”

68. “My first novel was not the first one I started. It was the first one I finished.”

— Alexander Chee

Alexander Chee Quote: “Did you ever see a bee lying drunk on a rose? Lost in the petal, so close you can’t see its tiny burrowing. In this way, I hang as I can. As close as I can.”

69. “Did you ever see a bee lying drunk on a rose? Lost in the petal, so close you can’t see its tiny burrowing. In this way, I hang as I can. As close as I can.”

— Alexander Chee

Alexander Chee Quote: “Writing is work. Anyone can do this, anyone can learn to do this. It’s not rocket science; it’s habits of mind and habits of work.”

70. “Writing is work. Anyone can do this, anyone can learn to do this. It’s not rocket science; it’s habits of mind and habits of work.”

— Alexander Chee

Alexander Chee Quote: “Sometimes, I think I know what my grandparents were listening for. Sound waves don’t ever go away. Not one sound goes away. The wave simply expands, infinitely. The sound remains. Imagine a cosine arc the size of Jupiter, and that might be the size of the wave of the last thing Peter ever said. I’d need an ear the size of another solar system to hear him again.”

71. “Sometimes, I think I know what my grandparents were listening for. Sound waves don’t ever go away. Not one sound goes away. The wave simply expands, infinitely. The sound remains. Imagine a cosine arc the size of Jupiter, and that might be the size of the wave of the last thing Peter ever said. I’d need an ear the size of another solar system to hear him again.”

— Alexander Chee

Alexander Chee Quote: “The night is a wonderful country to rule.”

72. “The night is a wonderful country to rule.”

— Alexander Chee

Alexander Chee Quote: “It isn’t just that you fall in love with someone – you each allow yourself new identities with each other, new skins, almost like a cocoon to who you’ll be next.”

73. “It isn’t just that you fall in love with someone – you each allow yourself new identities with each other, new skins, almost like a cocoon to who you’ll be next.”

— Alexander Chee

Alexander Chee Quote: “But inside the self performing as someone who was fine was the self who was not, and the vision I’d had of my life, the one that had me wanting to scream, was a vision of how living this way, inside of this performance, had blighted my life. I felt like a tree struck by lightning a long time ago, burning secretly from the inside out, the bark still smooth to the end – the word FINE painted on it.”

74. “But inside the self performing as someone who was fine was the self who was not, and the vision I’d had of my life, the one that had me wanting to scream, was a vision of how living this way, inside of this performance, had blighted my life. I felt like a tree struck by lightning a long time ago, burning secretly from the inside out, the bark still smooth to the end – the word FINE painted on it.”

— Alexander Chee

Alexander Chee Quote: “It’s much like writing an essay or including autobiographical content in fiction – to succeed, it requires an ability to be coldly impersonal about yourself and your state, so as not to cloud what is there with what you want to see.”

75. “It’s much like writing an essay or including autobiographical content in fiction – to succeed, it requires an ability to be coldly impersonal about yourself and your state, so as not to cloud what is there with what you want to see.”

— Alexander Chee

Alexander Chee Quote: “You might think that your voice as a writer would emerge naturally, all on its own, with no help whatsoever, but you’d be wrong. What I saw on the page was that the voice is in fact trapped, nervous, lazy. Even, and in my case most especially, amnesiac. And that it has to be cut free.”

76. “You might think that your voice as a writer would emerge naturally, all on its own, with no help whatsoever, but you’d be wrong. What I saw on the page was that the voice is in fact trapped, nervous, lazy. Even, and in my case most especially, amnesiac. And that it has to be cut free.”

— Alexander Chee

Alexander Chee Quote: “The catcalls from the cars make me feel strong at first. Isn’t beauty strong? I’d always thought beauty was strength, and so I wanted to be beautiful. Those cheers on the street are like a weightlifter’s bench-press record. The blond hair is like a flag, and all around me in the night are teams. But with each shout, I am more aware of the edge, how the excitement could turn into violence, blood, bruises, death.”

77. “The catcalls from the cars make me feel strong at first. Isn’t beauty strong? I’d always thought beauty was strength, and so I wanted to be beautiful. Those cheers on the street are like a weightlifter’s bench-press record. The blond hair is like a flag, and all around me in the night are teams. But with each shout, I am more aware of the edge, how the excitement could turn into violence, blood, bruises, death.”

— Alexander Chee

Alexander Chee Quote: “I have been reading about the Neutron Bomb. I want to be like that, radiant and deadly, a ghost of an impact, to pass through walls, to kill everyone, in flight among the empty houses, punching through molecules like a knife through a paper bag.”

78. “I have been reading about the Neutron Bomb. I want to be like that, radiant and deadly, a ghost of an impact, to pass through walls, to kill everyone, in flight among the empty houses, punching through molecules like a knife through a paper bag.”

— Alexander Chee

Alexander Chee Quote: “He smiles at me, and it is a knock on my chest, as if he had reached out and rapped it. My chest opens, my heart admits him.”

79. “He smiles at me, and it is a knock on my chest, as if he had reached out and rapped it. My chest opens, my heart admits him.”

— Alexander Chee

Alexander Chee Quote: “That art – even, or perhaps especially, art that is dedicated somehow to tenderness, dedicated as a lover who would offer something to her beloved in the last nights they’ll share before she leaves this life forever – is not weak. It is strength.”

80. “That art – even, or perhaps especially, art that is dedicated somehow to tenderness, dedicated as a lover who would offer something to her beloved in the last nights they’ll share before she leaves this life forever – is not weak. It is strength.”

— Alexander Chee

Alexander Chee Quote: “There was something I wanted to feel, and I felt it only when I was writing.”

81. “There was something I wanted to feel, and I felt it only when I was writing.”

— Alexander Chee

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