Writing Quotes
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I've always liked this idea that writing should comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable to create trouble. The value of a work of art can be measured by the harm spoken of it. If you're not feeling that, then absolutely, why bother?
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When my works are being translated, I always get this question from my translators: Up or down? Which means, should it sound biblical and highbrow, or should we take it all down to sound colloquial? In Hebrew, it's both all the time. People in Israel would write in a high register, they wouldn't write colloquial speech. I do a special take on colloquial speech.
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People, certainly in the U.K., look down on screenwriting as an art form, but I love the discipline of it. Next to the bagginess of novel writing, it almost feels like a martial art.
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When I first began writing, and I told people what I wrote, I'd get a blank stare and sometimes a 'Huh?' They weren't sure what young adult literature was. Now everyone knows.
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Irish fiction is full of secrets, guilty pasts, divided identities. It is no wonder that there is such a rich tradition of Gothic writing in a nation so haunted by history.
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The bass is just the crayon that I picked out of the box. I'd probably be writing similar stuff if I played guitar or trumpet. The pictures I want to draw I do with this crayon I chose, which is the bass.
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I do really enjoy Jay McInerney's wine writing. He's a good writer. He brings his fiction-writing skillset. He's not afraid to put wine in kind of a racy context and speak very candidly about it.
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I think I have a God complex, and I like moving mountains and writing stories that affect entire worlds, and it's a bit hard to do that in a contemporary setting because you have reality intruding. Whereas, when you set your own reality, you can make up your own rules and do whatever you like.
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As a musician I tell you that if you were to suppress adultery, fanaticism, crime, evil, the supernatural, there would no longer be the means for writing one note.
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I freely admit I know nothing about television or writing for the screen.
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I had to find stories no one else was writing, so I got away from the quarterback and the coach. I'm still looking for stories no one else has written.
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When I'm working, I'm pretty busy with that, but when I'm not, yeah, I like to make music. I sing in jazz bars and stuff, and then I mainly paint every day. It's kind of like a different side of my mind I like to use, and it keeps the other one fresh, and yeah, writing, I've been writing with some friends.
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If you can't fall asleep, learn how to meditate. I would recommend you listen to a beautiful tape called Spiritual Power, Spiritual Practice Energy Evaluation Meditations For Morning and Evening, 1998. It was the one that got me out of my writer's block when I was writing Caramelo. It's by Carolyn Myss.
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Writing a song is a long road. Or it can be.
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I've discovered I love the vast landscape a series offers. I tend to write long anyway, so, it turns out, series gives me the perfect vehicle for writing 'large' stories.
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The comforts come from my movie and television writing. It is unusual to live this well simply from books.
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I suppose most crime writing is urban. There's not a lot... certainly not in Australia, people don't often set books in the countryside.
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During these continued tough economic times, writing a sensible, fair budget that provides real opportunities for Washington families, workers and businesses is always a challenge.
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I loved 'Dexter.' I loved the writing of 'Dexter.' I thought that was a brilliant show, and Michael C. Hall was just brilliant.
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When Truman Capote wrote from the perspective of condemned murderers from a lower economic class than his own, he had some gall. But writing fiction takes gall.
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To write a blues song is to regiment riots and pluck gems from graves.
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If you don't hit a newspaper reader between the eyes with your first sentence, there is no need of writing a second one.
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When I first started writing music, it was to express that. I was trying to find God and trying to find meaning in my life. That's what my music was about. It wasn't to entertain.
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What I think is important about essayists - about the essay, as opposed to a lot of personal writing that kind of finds its way into public view - is that the material really has to be presented in a processed way.
