Marsha Norman Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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I've grown up with girls that are like Precious. I've grown up with people that are like everyone that I read about in that book. And so years later, when I was given the role, I just felt a huge responsibility to show the reality of that situation and to show that we're not making it up.
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I love writing journalism because it's all over in two hours and comes straight off the top of the head. Writing novels is soooooo much harder. It's the hardest thing I've ever done.
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Revision is the heart of writing. Every page I do is done over seven or eight times.
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Writing requires the concentration of the writer, demands that nothing else be done except that.
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If people would dare to speak to one another unreservedly, there would be a good deal less sorrow in the world a hundred years hence.
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I listen to crazy, robust rock music where they sing their faces off, and soul music, which can be similar.
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I must be like the princess who felt the pea through seven mattresses; each book is a pea.
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You have to see if the batsman is coming out, if he is staying back, what his grip is like, to gauge his intentions. A common trend I have observed is, a lot of batsmen change their grips when they are looking to hit: normally they either go high or slide their hand to the bottom of the handle to get maximum power.
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In the biographical novel, there's only one person involved. I, the author, spend two to five years becoming the main character. I do that so by the time you get to the bottom of Page 2 or 3, you forget your name, where you live, your profession and the year it is. You become the main character of the book. You live the book.
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I met in the street a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, his cloak was out at the elbows, the water passed through his shoes, - and the stars through his soul.
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When I was writing 'The Windup Girl' and 'Ship Breaker,' I was writing those simultaneously, so I was an unpublished writer, not really having that full sense that these books would go out in the world, that they would be successful, that there would be an audience and that there would be fans of those stories.
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Good acting is all in the writing. If it isn't on the page, then it really won't make any difference. You cannot act on force of personality alone.
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The demand in India is to have a hit, which becomes a promotion for the movie and makes people come to the theater. You have five songs and different promotions based on those. But when I do Western films, the need for originality is greater. Then I become very conscious about the writing.
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People say, 'How does having kids change your writing? Do you see the world through their eyes?' No - you just become a faster songwriter... In the old days, you'd be like, 'Oh I'm gonna work on this song for a few days.'
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I've been writing for a long time. I sat down to write my first novel in the middle of March of 1982.
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I have become infected, now that I see how beautifully a book is coming out of all this.
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You have to understand that while I pre-plot the meta story of a given book, I often have no idea of what will happen on the next page, let alone the next chapter. That's what makes it fun for me; I write the books the same way many people read them.
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I am a great procrastinator. When the writing is going really well, the laundry piles up.
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I was a terrible reader as a kid. I mean terrible. Super slow and very unfocused. It took me forever to read a book, and I remember being well into high school and still needing my mom to sit down and read aloud to me so I could pass my English tests and such.
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How come I love having an episode of deja vu? It's akin to an out-of-body experience, I would think. It sits with me, happily, begging me to delve into my memory to find its match point.
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I never hated hip-hop. It became the new rock and roll. It became the biggest thing that Africans have ever done in the history of the Americas. Hip-hop put more black Americans on than anything before it. It fed more people. It allowed them to diversify into clothing lines and billion-dollar headphone companies.
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I adore my two older sisters, Erika and Betsy.
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I've come up against a few challenges. I've just taken them on with a really pure energy. I'm not out to change people's minds. I'm out to maybe educate and inspire.
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Dreams are illustrations from the book your soul is writing about you.
