I try to be aware of technology and Japanese animation and old Belgian paintings, and get all my references from bits of everywhere.
People even split up by text message, they dump each other by text. Everything seems so disposable, so throwaway, but you have to engage with that if you're writing about the modern world. You've also got all these pop references that you feel obligated to make. They're just part of the bricolage of the whole thing, whether or not these are actually significant elements themselves.
Logic obviously is important. You need to be able to figure things out, to go to the end of a particular problem. But intuition is very important because it references things that logic alone cannot.
There are often references to childhood, but they're rarely the focus of the [my] novels.
Mystical references to society and its programs to help may warm the hearts of the gullible but what it really means is putting more power in the hands of bureaucrats.
Don't you know how much I hero-worshiped you when I was a kid? You were Marie Curie crossed with Emily Bronte crossed with Joan of Arc to me when I was ten. And when i told you that, you said my cultural references were the sign of a colonized mind.
I'm going to put that on my gravestone. "He created such a category of unwanted pop culture - Famous for directing unwanted cultural references".
It's really hard when you read literature in a language that's not your own. There are all these cultural references you have to be born into that particular language to get.
Expand your references, and you'll immediately expand your life.
I try to make those references. I try to make sure that they're not too obscure. But outside of that, I dare not claim anything in the spiritual realm for my own.
I think the only boundaries are individual and personal. A writer should be free to write about anything he or she wants to, including the twin towers. I have made small references to 911 in my past two books.
Thomas More's birth was noted by his father upon a blank page at the back of a copy of Geoffrey of Monmouth's 'Historia Regum Britanniae'; for a lawyer John More was remarkably inexact in his references to that natal year, and the date has been moved from 1477 to 1478 and back again.
When someone transitions you should refer to them by their new name both in the present and with references back in time.
More and more the writer is aware of an international community of readers for whom dense language use and frequent local references are a hindrance. This seems obvious. I don't decry it or criticize it - it's just a fact.
Money and goods are certainly the best of references.
People constantly make pop-culture references. That's why it's called popular culture, because people are aware of it and reference it constantly.
My references, my musical tastes, everything that I like, in fact, comes from the '70s.
Each of the seven chakras references different dimensional planes. It is a turnstile that leads us into different dimensions. As the kundalini rises, the knowledge and powers of those dimensions will begin to come to you.
Twitter reminds me of an era in French literature - Emile Zola and Honoré de Balzac - and the beginning of modernity and gossip. They had these fashion magazines of the time on display with all of the Emile Zola references.
I want to reach out and entertain people. I want people to come to a museum that have never been in a museum before. I want also to have enough art references in it that would satisfy the most sophisticated museum goer.
