Danielle Trussoni Quotes

Finding one's voice - or creating a narrative voice that has the power to carry your story - is the hardest part.

Reckless action is worse than wise restraint.

When we are no longer capable of love, we are no longer alive.

If I'm not writing, I'm not fully living. It has become the essential element that defines who I am.

One is but a shade of the other.

Even the good angels, I think, would inspire in humans some sort of fear.

But, most important, we must not become as base and treacherous as our enemies.

Stories of a mythical angel paradise called an Angelopolis are like Peter Pan's Never Never Land.

I was fifteen then, too young to fall in-love. Or maybe it is only then, with dew of childhood still in my eyes, that I was capable of such love. I will never know, of course.

Writing grew out of the pleasure of escape. My novels are very much outside of my personal experience. That is why I love writing fiction. It allows me to leave my existence and inhabit other lives.

One thing that I don't ever want to do is write something I don't love.

Since the Middle Ages, people have been writing about angels. Angelology was actually at one point a scholastic discipline.

We create an image of happiness and success and then we are beholden to it. We tell ourselves stories and sometimes these stories become so strong as to imprison us. Breaking free from our personal fortresses is a long, hard journey, but ultimately what allows one to grow.

I think angels definitely offer all the imaginative possibilities that vampires do, and I think they've actually been popular in Western culture for longer than vampires have been. I hope they become a part of the culture again in a new way.

I live in New York now, and miss France quite a bit. Of course, the reality of living in a small village in the south of France was very different than the fantasy I had of living in France. Over the years I spent there, that fantasy was worn away and I found a more realistic version of France than the one I began with. I wouldn't say the spell ever goes away, but transforms. Now that I understand French culture more intimately, and speak fluent French, I have a different, more solid, relationship to the country.

As a girl, I used to zip myself into a snowsuit, fall into the deepest snowdrift I could find and sweep my arms and legs into the powder, making snow angels that would crumble within minutes of their genesis. Despite their rapid disappearance, something about these frozen, evanescent angels has stayed with me ever since.

I taught myself to write in order to understand who I was and so yes, writing was an act of self-actualization in the beginning.

I believe a good memoir should have all of the narrative elements of a novel: character development, dialogue, descriptive language, and metaphor.

In terms of style, I think the memoirist should have a novelist's skill and all the elements of a novelist's toolbox. When I read a memoir, I want to really, deeply experience what the author experienced. I want to see the characters and hear the way they speak and understand how they think. And so in that way, writing a memoir feels similar to writing a novel.

If there are too many cooks in the kitchen, the dish is not going to work out.

Don't stay in a bad situation - whether it is a relationship or a job - out of fear of failure. It's not a failure to walk away and choose to be happy. It takes a lot of courage.

Beautiful music plays, but not everyone with ears can hear it.

I started listening to the Cure around the time I discovered Joy Division and, like Joy Division, they have shaped my taste in all sorts of dark and dreary ways.

These moments were wondrous and divine, instances when the gossamer curtain between heaven and earth ripped and all of humanity witnessed the marvel of the ethereal beings.

I'm sure that growing up in the Midwest played a role in my chronic escapism. In fact, before I lived in France, I lived in Japan, England, and Bulgaria. I was determined to experience other places and cultures, particularly because I had the perception that I'd been cut off from these experiences as a child.

I understood that the stories we believe have power over us. They work into our bodies and minds and change us from inside out. What if one day these stories become something stronger, more real, than fairy tales?

I don't think there are actually any theologians practicing angelology or studying angels anymore, but it's definitely in a lot of religious literature. It's still out there, and people are still interested. Even in the more secular way, books about angels are everywhere.

If people start pulling away the stereotypes of what angels are instead of these fluffy, teddy-bear kinds of angels, then they'll see, historically, that they were terrifying in some depictions. In the Bible, from what I remember, often the reaction to angels is one of terror.

When I was little, I went to a Catholic school and was required to go to church every morning and with my parents on Sundays, so I spent a lot of time sitting on a wooden pew. Angels are sort of a relief. If you're looking around, the other imagery is so dark and heavy. Looking at the beautifully rendered pictures of angels was more uplifting.

That's l'amour: we willingly walk into the future blindfolded.

The most obvious difference between writing novels and memoirs is that my memoirs are true stories, and explore certain experiences I've lived, and thus operate within the boundaries of memory and fact.

I always knew I wanted to write really imaginative fiction - fiction that was very different from my real life.

People don't actually think there is such a thing out there as angel research.

Maybe that is what marriage is: Two people creating a cult together.