Thomas Mallon Quotes
I actually think that Bandbox, by far the silliest of my books, is the best constructed of them.
Quotes to Explore
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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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Most films are rooted in a book or a comic strip, but I don't go out there saying I want to do adaptations.
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For the price of a couple of Happy Meals, you can buy a digital textbook and stop your child from having to carry around a six-pound book.
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On two or three book tours, I have visited bookstores in the Mall of America and signed copies of my books and introduced myself to store employees who I hope will sell them.
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I have a long view of history - my orientation is archaeological because I'm always thinking in terms of ancient Greece and Rome, ancient Persia and Egypt.
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I went to drama school in England, and you spend your first year working on the muscles surrounding the vocal mechanisms. You learn how you support it and create characters through your voice so that became an obsession. So I went to Hollywood thinking, 'Oh, I'm going to be one of the great voice-over artists.'
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I'm thinking, this is Robert Redford. You know, he's won an Academy Award, he's talking to me about directing a movie he's in. So you just think that it's Hollywood stuff or whatever.
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As a self-published author, you have the choice. Embrace the power to create a book that is truly yours. Don't be a whiner or a copycat.
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The Internet's impact is immense. My students can't imagine ever paying for a book.
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Terrorists are people, too - they are given to error. Naipaul and then DeLillo do a good job in their novels of drawing this out: I'm thinking of DeLillo's contention in 'Mao II' that terrorists have replaced writers as the people who 'alter the inner-life of the culture.' I thought that was marvellous!
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We think in generalities, but we live in detail. To make the past live, we must perceive it in detail in addition to thinking of it in generalities.
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China has The Bomb. ... Sometime in the future-25, 50, 75 years hence-what will the situation be like then? By that time the Chinese will have the capability of delivery too. That's the reason some schools of thinking don't rule out a destruction of the Chinese military potential before the situation grows worse than it is today. It's bad enough now.
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What's drinking?A mere pause from thinking!
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The story grew, got way bigger than the contest rules called for, and next thing I knew I had a book.
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I'm always sorry to finish a book, to let go of characters I love, people I've struggled to understand for years, people who evolve before me.
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All the books I have written have been one book, from the beginning.
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Each of us, having received several hundred dollars, we passed the time gloriously, spending our money freely - never thinking that our lives were risked gaining it.
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I've heard people, usually writers, say that no one wrote a great book after winning the Booker, but I honestly did not feel any big pressure. 'The Gathering' did hang over me in that it was darker than I thought at the time.
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I called the doctor, during writing the book, the psychiatrist who treated me at that time, Dr. Jackson. And I said, Dr. Jackson, whole pieces are missing. I don't understand what happened to me.
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Dear Procrastinator: Taking action in and of itself is not difficult, but is in fact satisfying and is usually followed by a sense of pride & accomplishment. However, it is THINKING about the action that you should be taking and NOT taking it that's difficult, as it leaves you feeling guilty and unsatisfied. THE SOLUTION: Stop thinking and take action NOW.
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Human character is smaller now, people don't have durable passions; they've replaced passions with excitement.
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Models are just mannequins seeking validation at the hands of sleazy fashion people.
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Objectivism is basically the same thing as faith-based science or for that matter faith-based foreign policy, where you start out with the assumption "We are good, they are evil," or "We know what is good and right and we know what is wrong," so all questions are settled in advance by a set of ideological prejudices.
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I actually think that Bandbox, by far the silliest of my books, is the best constructed of them.
