I read the landscape to help me through, to know what's come before me there, to find my footing in time.
It wasn't that I wanted to be an artist. But when I took my first drawing class with the painter Doug Ohlson, I could never finish a drawing.
I'm the author of my own misery.
Nothing is a matter of age. It's really in the person because you can publish book after book after book and still want that golden apple. And maybe it's the reality principle that has hit me. I believe that a career is very different from writing. My career is a certain kind of career.
I'm interested in reality but I'm not interested in realism at all.
It's easy, at this point in my life, very easy to write a beautiful sentence that's meaningless. A lot of writers do that. But I don't want it to be meaningless. I want it to actually say what I want it to say, and so I'm thinking about it again and again and again.
You have to create the space for the possibility of people speaking as they do. If writing is supposed to lead us in any way or educate or suggest other ways of being, it can't do so by simply reflecting what's considered to be realistic. I'm not a realist in that way.
You wanna do some livin' before you die. Do it down in New Orleans.
It was strange how words meant something when they came out of your mouth. Inside your head they were safe and silent, but once they were outside, people grabbed hold of them.
So,” sneered Fudge, recovering himself, “you intend to take on Dawlish, Shacklebolt, Dolores, and myself single-handed, do you, Dumbledore?” “Merlin’s beard, no,” said Dumbledore, smiling. “Not unless you are foolish enough to force me to. ” “He will not be single-handed!” said Professor McGonagall loudly, plunging her hand inside her robes. “Oh yes he will, Minerva!” said Dumbledore sharply. “Hogwarts needs you!
Have you ever seen a donkey smelling a beautiful rose? Donkeys aren't interested in roses, they like thorn bushes or watermelon rinds!