I got a liberal education. A white guy, rapping as Bugs Bunny, on a quintuple-platinum album.
We all have a Monster within; the difference is in degree, not in kind.
You think of yourself as an "individual person", with a unique and separate mind. You think you are born and you think you die. All your life you feel separate and alone. Sometimes desperately so. You fear death because you fear the loss of individuality. All this is an illusion. You, he, she, those things around you living or not, the stars and galaxies, the empty space in between- these are not distinct, separate objects. All is fundamentally entangled.
When I'm writing fiction I'm thinking, God, this is so hard - I have to make all this stuff up! I wish I were writing a nonfiction book where all the facts are laid out and I don't have to be so much at sea.
My first job was washing dishes in the basement of a nursing home for $2. 10 an hour, and I learned as much about the value of hard work there as I ever did later.
Once again, we shall have to operate not only outside the box, but outside the room containing the box.
A human being creates complexity by writing a novel on the surface of paper; a weather system creates complexity by writing waves on the surface of an ocean. What is the difference between the information carried in the words of a novel and the information carried on the waves of the sea? Listen, and the waves will speak, and someday, I tell you, you will write your thoughts on the surface of the sea.
How I envy those clerks who go by to their offices in the morning! There's the day's work cut out for them; no question of mood and feeling; they have just to work at something, and when the evening comes, they have earned their wages, and they are free to rest and enjoy themselves. What an insane thing it is to make literature one's only means of support! When the most trivial accident may at any time prove fatal to one's power of work for weeks or months. No, that is the unpardonable sin! To make a trade of an art! I am rightly served for attempting such a brutal folly.
There is nothing like writing to force you to think and get your thoughts straight.
It is the wisdom of the crocodiles, that shed tears when they would devour.
I listen to everything that comes in. I'm not real worried about demo sound quality. I can hear through that sort of thing. If a band can play, then they can play.