There is a certain amount of purpose, acquiescence, and satisfaction in nursing one's melancholy.
Writing gives you the illusion of control, and then you realize it's just an illusion, that people are going to bring their own stuff into it.
At the end of a miserable day, instead of grieving my virtual nothing, I can always look at my loaded wastepaper basket and tell myself that if I failed, at least I took a few trees down with me.
I'm friends with a lot of writers and so many of them say how much they hate signings and how they leave after a certain period of time. But what is so hard about sitting there while people tell you how much they love you? And if you don't like it, well, learn to like it. I try to take one person at a time. I never look down the line to see how many more people are left. And I always try to make people talk about something besides whatever they planned to say.
You need to give the reader a reason to turn the page. In a diary, you are just yourself. You aren't trying to entertain. You aren't trying to get anyone to turn the page. I have over one hundred and fifty six volumes of my diary and I guarantee you that if you read them, you'd stop and never come back.
I've often lost faith in myself, I've never lost it in my family
His embarassment would have pleased me, but once he recovered, there would be that awkward period that sometimes culminates in a handshake. I didn't want to touch these people's hands or see things from their point of view, I just wanted to continue hating them. So I kept my mouth shut and stared off into space.
The rage of the oppressed is never the same as the rage of the privileged.
I had the good fortune of speaking with Orson Wells many decades ago and he said 'Success is primarily luck anyway. ' And I have been very lucky. Of course, Orson Wells was enormously talented and brilliant - so who am I to argue with him!
I know there is a God - I see the storm coming and I see his hand in it - if he has a place then I am ready - we see the hand.
What I seek to accomplish is simply to serve with my feeble capacity truth and justice, at the risk of pleasing no one.