Mona Simpson Quotes
I unplug the phone and close the door and just stick with it. I don't ever go out for lunch and I don't take vacations. I like to be awake when no one else is: either just before dawn in the morning or late, late at night. Silence helps.
Quotes to Explore
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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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Well, I must tell you I write the scripts very close to the bone. So I'm writing episode seven now and couldn't tell you what happens in episode eight.
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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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Very often, writing a song is a process that happens to me rather than one that I instigate. I feel a song coming on and, like a sneeze; I wait for it until it comes.
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Writing about a person whose struggle you wish you could solve is an act of compassion and also, frankly, opportunism.
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When I'm writing, I'm just in it and trying to figure out what seems best.
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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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It usually takes me 20 to 90 minutes to write a song because once I start, I don't stop. If I start writing a song, and you try to have a conversation with me, you're a bad person.
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Writing is a very lonely occupation. To write you need to concentrate, to concentrate you need to lock yourself away. No distractions; you want your stream of thought uninterrupted.
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At least half my writing time is spent researching. So for every hour I'm actually clicking on the keyboard, I'm spending another hour trying to figure out some tiny detail I need answered.
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Even if I have already peaked, I have to believe I can improve. I wake up every morning, and go to practice, with the illusion that I'm going to get better that day.
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The small businessman is smart; he realizes there's no free lunch. On the other hand, he knows where to go to get a good inexpensive sandwich.
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I'm very physical. When I'm writing, I'm playing all the parts; I'm saying the lines out loud, and if I get excited about something - which doesn't happen very often when I'm writing, but it's the greatest feeling when it does - I'll be out of the chair and walking around, and if I'm at home, I'll find myself two blocks from my house.
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The problem with marriage is that it ends every night after making love, and it must be rebuilt every morning before breakfast.
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I like writing a lot more than I used to. I used to find it scary but now I've got used to it once it gets going. I used to find it hard to start. Fear of the blank page. The first thing you write down won't bear any relation to what's in your head and that's always disappointing.
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I don't think I will ever write about politics or foreign policy. I feel like there is so much good writing in those areas that I have little to add. I also like to steer clear of writing about people whom I do not personally like.
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Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over world-building.
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I don't read books regularly, because I'm always writing them. I've written 30 books, thousands of pages.
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How can life be worth living, if devoid Of the calm trust reposed by friend in friend? What sweeter joy than in the kindred soul, Whose converse differs not from self-communion?
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I think if you were a gambler and you had a million dollars, you should have gone to Las Vegas and bet a million dollars that Tennessee and Rutgers would meet in the NCAA tournament.
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Actors look for characters. If they read a well-written character, and if they think the director's not an idiot, they're going to sign up and do some acting.
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It was getting to be the end of the day. The sun was somehow setting again. A man could stand in the street and tell a perfect stranger a story of such incomprehensible evil that it really seemed as if the sun should stop shining altogether. But there was no alteration in Heaven, no sign that the cries of children had been heard.
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I unplug the phone and close the door and just stick with it. I don't ever go out for lunch and I don't take vacations. I like to be awake when no one else is: either just before dawn in the morning or late, late at night. Silence helps.
