Exposure to the arts and culture is enormously valuable.
I read three books a week.
The great thing about a short story is that it doesn't have to trawl through someone's whole life; it can come in glancingly from the side.
There are some tales not for telling, whether because they are too long, too precious, too laughable, too painful, too easy to need telling or too hard to explain. After all, after years and travels my secrets are all I have left to chew on in the night.
Ma's still nodding. "You're the one who matters, though. Just you. " I shake my head till it's wobbling because there's no just me.
Writing is nearly always a matter of finding whatever your brain needs to trick it into being creative, and in my case, a tiny little bit of fact just seems to work.
It’s called mind over matter. If we don’t mind, it doesn’t matter. ” When a bit of me hurts, I always mind.
I'm not in any way religious. I don't go to church, but I consider myself spiritual.
I have done what people do, my life makes a reasonable showing. Can I go back to my books now?
I actually don't subscribe to the notion that comedy is easier than drama. When you're trying to be funny and you're not funny, that's really terrible. It's a horrible feeling.
There was an assumption that aerial bombing of civilians in World War II would cause fragile, working-class people to basically have nervous breakdowns and it would paralyze the state. That was the logic of aerial bombing. In fact, it doesn't happen at all, but the logic behind aerial bombing has never stopped, even though it never demoralizes, terrorizes, or paralyzes a population.