Female authors were still using male names when I was young, or they were neatly shoehorned into 'women's books' except for those few that men could always point at when the disparity was pointed out.
In politics, it's very theatrical. There's a lot of stage craft. The campaign is trying to tell a story that they want people to believe in, and candidates are playing the role, like actors, by a creative personae that people will be attracted to.
The fact that I have always been deeply invested in politics, and African politics in particular, inevitably played a role in my first novel and, of course, in my decision to write about a handful of particular conflicts in Africa as a journalist.
Only he has the calling for politics who is sure that he shall not crumble when the world from his point of view is too stupid or too base for what he wants to offer.
The title always comes last. What I really work hard on is the beginning. Where do you begin? In what tone do you begin? I almost have to have a scene in my mind.
I've always seen 'Y' as an unconventional romance between a boy and his protector. It was always about the last boy on Earth becoming the last man on Earth, and the women who made that possible.
Before novels written by women were relegated to their own 'genre,' I was introduced to Jane Smiley by a dear professor who raised my awareness of what female authors were bringing to the table of contemporary fiction.
I do think women can have it all - but not all women. If you take daring steps and are smart about it, you can probably have it all. But you might have to wait a while.
Remember that in the early days of the feminist movement, they refused to have a leader; different women would just stand up and speak. The early feminists were very careful to not put what was spontaneously arising back in the old bottle.
My female writers have always been my backbone. I had a writing room of six women for five years so I know what women do. Cultivated by me, by the way!
There are days when I think the National Endowment for the Arts should issue a quota system for the production of plays by women - especially when you realize women buy 70 percent of all theater tickets.
Coming out of the '60s and the Vietnam War in America, it was commonplace for people to make films that had relevance to them. And since the '70s, cinema has gone almost entirely in the direction of spectacle and escapism and superhero films.
The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency -- the belief that the here and now is all there is.
People are so busy dreaming the American Dream, fantasizing about what they could be or have a right to be, that they're all asleep at the switch. Consequently we are living in the Age of Human Error.
Journalism wishes to tell what it is that has happened everywhere as though the same things had happened for every man. Poetry wishes to say what it is like for any man to be himself in the presence of a particular occurrence as though only he were a...
I have always been a bit of an introvert. In fact, my dad used to force me to meet people so that my interpersonal skills improve. As an individual, I was happiest when left alone.
I'm actually part of a number of minorities. I grew up being a horribly awkward kid. A terrible student. And now I find myself as a filmmaker, and you feel kind of alone in the world because you're separate from everyone else.
I think Jersey stands alone, and because I'm from Jersey, I never make fun of where people are from. I'll make fun of what they look like, but I'll never make fun of where they are from. Jersey is special.
When I do a mix tape for my kids, for my friends, for my lover, I meticulously choose the tracks, and it's beautiful. And when they are alone they think of me - and when I am alone I think of them.
I think the moment I discovered I definitely wanted to act was when I saw a play alone by myself when I was fourteen. Maybe it was a Moliere play? I discovered the atmosphere of the theater, and I knew I wanted to be an actor.
It is in moments of illness that we are compelled to recognize that we live not alone but chained to a creature of a different kingdom, whole worlds apart, who has no knowledge of us and by whom it is impossible to make ourselves understood: our body...
