I do love live performing, but I'm not a stand-up naturally, and I don't like the lifestyle of working just in the evenings at clubs.
Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths pure theatre.
You're supposed to get tired planting bulbs. But it's an agreeable tiredness.
Much of the activity we think of as writing is, actually, getting ready to write.
I work continuously within the shadow of failure. For every novel that makes it to my publisher's desk, there are at least five or six that died on the way. And even with the ones I do finish, I think of all the ways they might have been better.
At times. . . one is downright thankful for the self-absorption of other people.
What did a few ripples in the flesh matter when, all too soon, now or later, that flesh would be making its return journey to dust?
The Party is not interested in the overt act. The thought is all we care about.
Sometimes I hear my voice and it's been here, silent all these years
I had spent my childhood and the better part of my early adulthood trying to understand my mother. She had been an extraordinarily difficult person, spiteful and full of rage, with a temper that could flare, seemingly out of nowhere, scorching everything and everyone who got in its way. [pp. 40-41]
I tend to stay in character between scenes. . . to be rather serious on set, but here's why, and I think people will find it surprising. I'm one of the worst 'corpses' on a movie set, which means you can't keep a straight face. You start to get the giggles and you can't stop.