Race is used, by all of us, in the most manipulative ways, is often force-fit and reduced to something it isn't, to something that gives us a sense of comfort, a false one. Many of us thought - needed to feel - the whole business was 'settled.' But i...
I've never written a movie, I'm not in the movie business. I go out to L.A. and I'm like everyone else wandering around in a daze hoping I see movie stars. I write the novels that the movies are based on, and that feels like enough of a job for me.
Writing fiction is for me a fraught business, an occasion of daily dread for at least the first half of the novel, and sometimes all the way through. The work process is totally different from writing nonfiction. You have to sit down every day and ma...
The margin for making mistakes has gotten much smaller. In a commodity economy, it's hard to kill off your business. You still have the mine. You still have oil wells. You can always rebuild. In a knowledge economy, if you make a mistake, you're in t...
This is what rhyme does. In a couplet, the first rhyme is like a question to which the second rhyme is an answer. The first rhyme leaves something in the air, some unanswered business. In most quatrains, space is created between the rhyme that poses ...
I remember being in the Ontario Legislature and the Liberals yelling over at me about the fact that the dollar was rising, and that was bad for business, and didn't I realize that. And I thought, 'What are you talking about?' The value of the currenc...
I've been doing this for seven and a half years. I've been just bustin' it, trying to break in as an artist in this business. For me, it's still just about the work. I get the scripts and I'm all about that. I don't really even have an idea what that...
In the real estate business you learn more about people, and you learn more about community issues, you learn more about life, you learn more about the impact of government, probably than any other profession that I know of.
Life would certainly be easier if we all came equipped with our own personal FAQ lists. When we meet someone, we could pass them a business card with the list on the back, and then step back and let them read before we tried to talk.
A single moment spent in a business meeting or at a pub is more than enough to reveal the basic human truth that we are all faking it most of the time. We congratulate a rival on a triumph when actually we are choking on spite. We are cordial and att...
My sports were team sports: ice hockey and baseball. The whole team dynamic is similar in business. Leadership is earned - the captain earns that role; it's not because he's the coach's son. These are all things we know, but in today's world, it's no...
When I go to business meetings, I'm still told way too often by some receptionist, 'The mail room is downstairs,' to believe that racial perceptions don't still exist. But I figure there are always going to be knuckleheads no matter how many of their...
On the simplest level, telecommuting makes it harder for people to have the kinds of informal interactions that are crucial to the way knowledge moves through an organization. The role that hallway chat plays in driving new ideas has become a cliche ...
The history of the Internet is, in part, a series of opportunities missed: the major record labels let Apple take over the digital-music business; Blockbuster refused to buy Netflix for a mere fifty million dollars; Excite turned down the chance to a...
I'm glad about what's happening to the music business. This last crop of people we had in the 90s, who are going away now, they didn't like music. They didn't trust musicians. They wanted something else from it.
I come from the deep countryside. My family was in farming. I was not really exposed to business. Coming from that environment, I just wanted in my life to go overseas - that was a childhood dream because I wanted diversity, contacts, cultural meetin...
Obviously, as the music business has suffered tremendously, with being able to illegally download everything, it's also become amazingly easy to find new bands, because everyone can put their stuff online. Even if you can't find a record label, you c...
Sometimes it feels like I've been in the business forever, but then other times, it feels like kind of a flash. Growing up, all I wanted to do was sing. All I wanted to do was get on a bus and ride around the country and sing for people and be a hous...
A strategy is something like, an innovative new product; globalization, taking your products around the world; be the low-cost producer. A strategy is something you can touch; you can motivate people with; be number one and number two in every busine...
The music business is very hard on women over 22. You really have to prove yourself every time you make a record. Are you as vibrant as you used to be? Are you as sexy? So I really want to prove that a woman in her 30s can be all those things and mor...
I've been in this business for a long while, but it's not like I've been waiting tables. Since I started writing, I've only worked on things that I love. I've had a lot of heartbreak, but you don't become an artist and not expect that.
