When I write for 'n+1,' I begin by doing a lot of reading, to try to convince myself I'm not stupid. Then I scribble down a paragraph here, a paragraph there, when a notion strikes. Then I see if I can arrange those notions in a way that yields an ar...
I would direct TV. That's a little different. It's more of a contained world as a director. When you're doing a film you get on the rollercoaster, you put the safety bar down and then you're gone. And it's hard. It's hard, too, as a parent, I think, ...
When I sat down and wrote the first paragraph, I was like, 'Oh, I can go with this.' I didn't do an outline. I didn't do anything. I just wrote sentence by sentence, not knowing where the story was going.
Thick pulse and dizziness make his head light and stomach turn. He really can’t feel his fingers, or knees for that matter. But everything settles down again—almost as if it were always meant to—when his eyes graze a dumb grin and a pair of gli...
I like to play around with my nightmares. Whenever I have a bad dream – something strange and unnerving – I write it down, sometimes in the middle of the night when everyone around me is sleeping soundly, and then I come back to it the next morni...
According to the rules of comedy, your suffering will be funny after an undetermined length of time. Maybe not while you're having your gangrenous leg sawed off, watching your home burn down or learning how to be intimate with your cellmate, but, in ...
Back in '96, I was on 'The Price Is Right' pointing at refrigerators, and 'Extra,' the TV show, came down. They were the first entertainment entity that put people up on the Internet, so they put my picture up, and America Online called the next day ...
I cannot wait to come back to Glasgow. I know the place like the back of my hand. In fact, one of the jobs I had as a student was in Cineworld. And I was always at gigs in King Tut's, Nice 'n' Sleazy's and the Barras. I played Ultimate Frisbee down o...
I have a wardrobe full of scarves now, just about every color under the sun. My trick is that I always cut them in two, down the middle. They're lighter, thinner, skinnier that way. And because I'm cheap, I get two scarves for the price of one.
Libraries are the future of reading. When the economy is down, we need to make it easier for people to buy and read books for free, not harder. It is stupid to sacrifice tomorrow’s book buyers for today’s dollars, especially when it’s obvious t...
In an essay, you have the outcome in your pocket before you set out on your journey, and very rarely do you make an intellectual or psychological discovery. But when you write fiction, you don't know where you are going - sometimes down to the last p...
He felt, rather than saw, her chin lift toward him. But instead of pulling her hand from his grip and turning away, she tightened her own fingers and unceremoniously, unexpectedly, threw herself down the incline, dragging him with her. Dragging him w...
You have to eat right. That does not mean that I don't drink Cuban coffee. That does not mean that I do not have two cigarettes a day - that's what I'm down to. I drink wine - you know, I'm normal. But I do eat well.
Well, I can understand how you feel. You worked hard, studying for the spelling bee, and I suppose you feel you let everyone down, and you made a fool of yourself and everything. But did you notice something, Charlie Brown?" "What's that?" "The world...
Bread is a second cause; the LORD Himself is the first source of our sustenance. He can work without the second cause as well as with it; and we must not tie Him down to one mode of operation. Let us not be too eager after the visible, but let us loo...
I still have a stammer that I can control by not opening a sentence with a hard consonant, or by concentrating for a moment, breathing softly down. Growing up, the 'Our Father' was lovely, made for me, the 'Hail Mary' was gorgeous, and 'Glory Be to t...
People can talk about punk all they want, but after new wave put that down, metal is the voice of the disenfranchised and that need to become unhinged. That's why it appeals to so many people when they are younger and carries over when those people, ...
It used to be that if your automobile broke, the teenager down the street with the wrench could fix it. Now you have to have sophisticated equipment that can deal with microchips. We're entering a world in which the complexity of the devices and the ...
Sit down before fact with an open mind. Be prepared to give up every preconceived notion. Follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads or you learn nothing. Don’t push out figures when facts are going in the opposite direction.
My attorney put down the phone after making several calls. “There’s only one place where we can get fresh salmon,” he said, “and it’s closed on Sunday.” “Of course,” I snapped. “These goddamn Jesus freaks! They’re multiplying like...
Take one flower that you like and get lots of them. And don't try to 'arrange' them. It's surprisingly hard to do a flower arrangement the way a florist does one. Instead, bunch them all together or put them in a series of small vases all down the ta...
