The first time I went to Helene Hanff's apartment at 305 East 72nd Street, it was 1977, and I was a 16-year-old girl who wanted to be a writer.
I'm an actor and a writer, that's how I think of myself. Sometimes my time is divided equally, sometimes less equally, but that's what I do.
I think most writers feel like they're on the outside looking in much of the time. All of us feel, to a certain extent, alienated from the stuff going on around us.
I think one of the things I was shocked about was how interested the world is in 'American Idol' and how people, writers, they write about 'Idol' all the time, and I guess I didn't expect that.
Adolescence is the most Technicolor time in our lives. It's the time when adulthood is new and we care most about it. It contains the highs and lows that excite me as a writer.
If I'd had more time or been a better writer, I would have tried to put the same ideas and experiences into a novel. But I didn't so I slapped it up on the Web.
You have to work hard to get to the top of your game. I think every writer has doubts! I still do all the time.
The deaf community is nearly never portrayed accurately on television/film because most writers never took the time to immerse themselves in the deaf culture before portraying it on television. They also never got to know their deaf actors.
The novelist's obligation to remake the sensuous texture of a vanished world is also the historian's. The strongest fiction writers often do deep research to make the thought and utterances of lost time credible.
I was a 'learn by doing' writer - I never took any formal writing classes. So it took a long time to figure things out and find my voice.
I think I'm also more open to other writers being present and listening to other opinions, whereas before I was going through my angsty teen years while making records.
I'm not your expert on Africa or animals or whatever. I'm not a travel writer or maker of documentaries. I was someone who doesn't know very much, trying to communicate.
I think people read travel books either because they intend to take that trip, or because they would never take that trip. In a sense, as a writer you are doing the travel for the reader.
The only thing I know anything about are my own fantasies and anxieties. I don't trust my eyes. I consider myself to be a short-story writer.
Apart from a few simple principles, the sound and rhythm of English prose seem to me matters where both writers and readers should trust not so much to rules as to their ears.
The hardest thing to teach young writers is that it's wonderful to tell your truth. And that's what you should do. But it damn well better be beautiful.
Annie Kinsella: Ray! He's my favorite writer too, but what's Terence Mann got to do with baseball?
Andre: Justice doesn't mean the bad guy goes to jail, it just means that someone pays for the crime.
Tito: Nobody cares what I do. Why should I bother coming to school?
Andre: She can't even look at me because I look like my dad.
Satine: Please tell me you're not one of Toulouse's oh so talented, charmingly bohemian, tragically impoverished writers?
