And Wolfram knows about cellular automata?” “Oh, my goodness, yes,” said Anna. “He wrote a book you could kill a man with—twelve hundred pages—called A New Kind of Science. It’s all about them.” “We should totally ask him what he th...
When I'm actually writing by hand, I get more of a sense of the rhythm of sentences, of syntax. The switch to the computer is when I actually start thinking about lines. That's the workhorse part. At that point, I'm being more mathematical about putt...
I don't write huge books any more. I used to write 1,000 printed pages, but now I write short books. I did one on Napoleon, 50,000 words - enjoyed doing that. He was a baddie. I did one on Churchill, which was a bestseller in New York, I'm glad to sa...
People write about getting sick, they write about tummy trouble, they write about having to wait for a bus. They write about waiting. They write three pages about how long it took them to get a visa. I'm not interested in the boring parts. Everyone h...
I remember when I was in graduate school and someone in workshop would say, 'I'm going to bring in a chapter of my novel.' The thought that someone could think they'd write a whole long thing... I could only see twelve pages ahead. But then I realize...
a happy birthday this evening, I sat by an open window and read till the light was gone and the book was no more than a part of the darkness. I could easily have switched on a lamp, but I wanted to ride the day down into night, to sit alone, and smoo...
When I was eight years old, I wrote a paragraph-long short story about a goat on my mother's hundred-pound, black-and-white-screen laptop. The story came about largely because I liked the way the word 'goat' looked on the page, but I decided then and...
We go to the opening arguments or the closing arguments of a case, and we'd see which actor got the big one. I had a seven-page one once which just about killed me, and I thought, 'Oh, I'm going to get fired, that's it, I can't do it.' It was like a ...
What amazes me is that most days feel useless. I don't seem to accomplish anything-just a few pages, most of which don't seem very good. Yet, when I put all those wasted days together, I somehow end up with a book of which I'm very proud.
Do we really want to be rid of our resentments, our anger, our fear? Many of us cling to our fears, doubts, self-loathing or hatred because there is a certain distorted security in familiar pain. It seems safer to embrace what we know than to let go ...
I had to get some things right in my personal life. And once I got my family on the same page, to understand who I am and what I do for a living, I asked my oldest daughter, 'What do you think about Daddy coming back?' And she said, 'I didn't think y...
You know, I never knew if I had any talent when I started in this business. My first job was being a page at The Tonight Show. I saw Jack Paar come out one night and sit on the edge of his desk and talk about what he'd done the night before. I though...
You might have, as a character, 30 pages of dialogue a day if you're what they call a 'front-burner story.' So you go home, you learn your lines for the next day, you get up, you're there at 7 in the morning, you do a quick rehearsal, you're on camer...
If I think back on the books to which I have devoted my entire life, I am most surprised by those moments when I have felt as if the sentences, dreams, and pages that have made me so ecstatically happy have not come from my own imagination - that ano...
I do find it challenging to leave stuff out. Two of my models for novel-writing are 'The Great Gatsby' and 'As I Lay Dying,' both very short books. I've never wanted to write a 600-page novel, not that I think there's anything wrong with them. For me...
The daily quota I've set for myself is 500 words or approximately a page and a half double-spaced. Which isn't much, except that I'm extremely slow, extremely meticulous. 'Le mot juste' haunts me. On a good day, I will finally secrete the 500th word ...
I started writing morning pages just to keep my hand in, you know, just because I was a writer and I didn't know what else to do but write. And then one day as I was writing, a character came sort of strolling in and I realized, Oh my God, I don't ha...
I tried once in my life to write a novel. I had written something like 80 pages of it when my laptop got stolen. When I told people this, they acted as if something tragic had happened, but I kind of felt relieved, grateful to the thief who saved me ...
You have two pages, that's the whole credit card agreement. The terms are clear and flat and easy to see so anyone can read them. So you could lay four credit cards in front of you and say, 'Oh, that's the one that has the highest rate, that's the on...
When the voice of your friend or the page of your book sinks into democratic equality with the pattern of the wallpaper, the feel of your clothes, your memory of last night, and the noises from the road, you are falling asleep. The highly selective c...
Come on. We must have a little pity. Do you know what we're talking about now?...When a man supports his relatives by his labor, he has no right to sacrifice himself. That is deserting his family...My friends, there is a tomorrow; you won't be here o...
