Beach balls at festivals are the work of the devil.
The best way to learn about writing is to study the work of other writers you admire.
She believed not in divine salvation but in the proposition that we poor mortals are fully capable of saving ourselves, if conditions and inclinations are right, and the evidence of this potential is found in the smallest of gestures, like the uncertain resting of a large hand on a bony shoulder.
I've often said that there's no such thing as writer's block; the problem is idea block. When I find myself frozen-whether I'm working on a brief passage in a novel or brainstorming about an entire book-it's usually because I'm trying to shoehorn an idea into the passage or story where it has no place.
You think publishing is tough but the music world is ten times tougher.
I've worked for law firms, I've worked for corporations, and for the past 20 years, I've been writing working for myself, and believe me it's a lot better. That's a big part of the James Bond panache, that you're responsible, 100 percent responsible, for the success or failure of your mission in life, whatever it is.
Ideally, I like to integrate the human issues into the suspense story itself.
We do not by any means think it desirable that the kingdom of righteousness and peace should be established on earth (because under any circumstances it would be the kingdom of the profoundest mediocrity and Chinaism); we rejoice in all men, who like ourselves love danger, war and adventure, who do not make compromises, nor let themselves be captured, conciliated and stunted; we count ourselves among the conquerors; we ponder over the need of a new order of things, even of a new slavery for every strengthening and elevation of the type "man" also involves a new form of slavery.
I'm so sick and tired of all this violence, this gun violence. And how could I speak on it - you know - being one who has advocated violence and gun violence? The only way I could do it was through a song that spoke from the heart.
This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceived a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistably propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. The storm is what we call progress.
Even without success, creative persons find joy in a job well done. Learning for its own sake is rewarding.