Katherine Dunn Quotes
I see my writing as the process of looking at the usual, but from two steps to the side.
Quotes to Explore
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When I was around eight, I learned how to touch-type at school, and I received a computer as a present. I started writing plays, and for many years I thought I would be a playwright.
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I've been writing a lot of poetry recently. It helps me think and work things out.
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I've always written songs that were confessional, acoustic, wordy - my writing style matches my personality. The music always has to match the mouth it comes out of.
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The problem with writing a monthly book is that you're going through your work like a man running for a bus, red-faced and out of breath. There isn't time for reflection or critical self-examination.
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There's something different that happens when you're writing a song for your own record that you know you're going to sing.
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If I were trying to impress a girl, I wouldn't get all super dressed because I would look like I was trying too hard. Instead, I would probably wear what I normally would.
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Hard writing makes easy reading.
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Writing my first book, I think in hindsight I went into it saying, 'It's gonna sell.' I was earning enough to scrape by sometime around a book or two before 'Tell No One.' I moved up from $50,000 to $75,000, then $150,000 for each book. I had never thought I would be doing anything else. I had enough encouragement.
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Historical fiction is actually good preparation for reading SF. Both the historical novelist and the science fiction writer are writing about worlds unlike our own.
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I have yet to see a piece of writing, political or non-political, that doesn't have a slant. All writing slants the way a writer leans, and no man is born perpendicular, although many men are born upright.
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I have no interest in writing, directing or producing.
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As a storyteller, when you're writing a movie and when you're directing, you want to keep people entertained. That's the whole point, right? It has to be entertaining.
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Whatever's going on with me at the time of writing is going to find its way into the piece. If that doesn't happen, then what the hell am I doing? So if I'm writing 'Inglourious Basterds,' and I'm in love with a girl and we break up, that's going to find its way into the piece.
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When writers stop to sharpen pencils or get up and make coffee to procrastinate, they still stay in their heads with their characters. But when you zip over to read email or check your Facebook page, you get zapped out of the fictive dream. It's brutal on my writing.
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I never see myself as writing satire. I think I write about people as they really are, without making them better or worse.
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Whenever you're writing something that's reflective, you have to put yourself through some sort of ordeal just to understand the way you're feeling.
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I love the whole process for each new album. The writing, the touring, everything. For me, it never gets old.
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The hardest thing about writing my second album is that I had 20 years to write my first album.
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I was already writing 'The Lost Symbol' when I started to realize 'The Da Vinci Code' would be big. The thing that happened to me and must happen to any writer who's had success is that I temporarily became very self-aware.
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My publishers are wonderful because they have let me write what I wanted to. They're wise enough to know that, with any author who's not simply writing formulas - who's trying to create something new - pressuring them to do something for market purposes almost always backfires. I can't imagine working under those circumstances, actually.
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This goes for our songwriting as well as our success as a band - the minute we stopped chasing what we thought people wanted to hear and started writing things that moved us, that's when people started paying attention.
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A song like 'Shooting Star' - the thought process behind writing that song was that I looked around and thought, 'Wow, there's a lot of people dying at that time in the music business.'
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Writing original songs is much, much harder (I think) because you only have yourself to conjure up EVERY single moment a listener is going to hear. It's a craft that goes directly from your brain to their ears. You can never be sure that what you're writing is gonna be good enough to keep a listener engaged and truly experience something. It's a shot in the dark.
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I see my writing as the process of looking at the usual, but from two steps to the side.
