We are shallow because our media are so horribly shallow. Every morning, I peruse the papers, and there is so little to read in them. It is the same with radio - all that noise, that artifice.
Each morning my characters greet me with misty faces willing, though chilled, to muster for another day's progress through the dazzling quicksand the marsh of blank paper.
I'm not one of those writers I learned about who get up in the morning, put a piece of paper in their typewriter machine and start writing. That I've never understood.
I remember my mom saying to me that what your friends do is one thing, but what you do could be on the front page of the paper.
Never ever discount the idea of marriage. Sure, someone might tell you that marriage is just a piece of paper. Well, so is money, and what's more life-affirming than cold, hard cash?
The woman I'm attracted to won't be based on what I write down on paper. It's going to be what I feel.
I obviously have a knack for getting on paper what a lot of people have thought and didn't realize they thought. And they say, 'Hey, yeah!' And they like that.
I did Playboy. There was an ad in the paper for playmates. Playboy called me and flew me to Los Angeles, and I was on the March cover of 1992.
So I had a ghostwriter, they call them, or somebody who is an experienced writer, to help. I've got the ideas in my head, it's getting them properly on paper.
I have a huge respect for writers and realise that this is not an area that I find easy. I doubt that I would have the patience in front of a blank sheet of paper to become a writer.
Mischief springs from the power which the moneyed interest derives from a paper currency which they are able to control, from the multitude of corporations with exclusive privileges... which are employed altogether for their benefit.
So much better to write pen on paper; you can do it anywhere, say, while stuck at the airport.
We are material creatures who spend much of our lives on material pursuits (even building a cathedral or writing a novel requires stone and mortar or paper and ink).
Lots of people working in cryptography have no deep concern with real application issues. They are trying to discover things clever enough to write papers about.
You have to focus on what you're passionate about. For me it's the forests and of course, because I'm concerned about the forests, I'm concerned about the way paper is made.
I can still put down some pretty nasty stuff on paper, which is what I enjoy doing.
NEWSPAPER: What great paper is the Earth; what a typeface is the Day; what ink is the Night! – Everyone prints, everyone reads; no one understands.
It is not worth the paper it is written on unless it is backed by the kind of force that will make the other side consider the penalties too heavy to break the agreement.
The second draft is on yellow paper, that's when I work on characterizations. The third is pink, I work on story motivations. Then blue, that's where I cut, cut, cut.
I'm not a businessman. I could pack it in, but I like work. I don't want to sound like Catherine Cookson, but I've worked since I was eight, with a paper round and in a fruit and veg shop.
I wanted no other job than to work in newspapers. I was fascinated by the process of collecting information, talking to people and having the story appear in a paper that would be delivered in your letterbox.
