It could be that all awful dictators are frustrated artists - Mao with his poetry and Mussolini with his monuments. Stalin was once a journalistic hack, and I can personally testify to how frustrated they are. Pol Pot left a very edgy photo collectio...
Beyond that, I seem to be compelled to write science fiction, rather than fantasy or mysteries or some other genre more likely to climb onto bestseller lists even though I enjoy reading a wide variety of literature, both fiction and nonfiction.
I can't do fiction unless I visualize what's going on. When I began to write science fiction, one of the things I found lacking in it was visual specificity. It seemed there was a lot of lazy imagining, a lot of shorthand.
Red carpets seem so glamorous, but you're really just standing there sweating and worrying your hair is going to fall. And in the end, people are only going to see one picture of you. You just smile for one second and then you walk over to the side a...
We live in a world where finding fault in others seems to be the favorite blood sport. It has long been the basis of political campaign strategy. It is the theme of much television programming across the world. It sells newspapers. Whenever we meet a...
A surprising number of American skyjackers were not yet old enough to drink or sometimes even drive. These adolescents were generally inept at planning their crimes, and few of their capers met with any success; most seemed to end within moments of s...
One guy that really inspired me was Michael Jordan. I wouldn't say that he inspired me as a sportsman, but I love going back and watching videos of him, especially how he conducts himself in interviews. He always seemed to be very careful about the w...
I can't seem to help writing love stories. I definitely crave romance. When I was young, I craved romance in books, but I didn't want to read just romance - love plays such a big part in our lives, it shouldn't be cut out and restricted to its own fi...
'What was there before the Big Bang?' That's a question that both kids and adults love to pose to anyone who seems sympathetic. After all, if the universe has only been around for roughly 14 billion years, isn't it legitimate to ask what was in exist...
It's hard to get people at a record company to talk about music. They don't seem to want to talk about music, it's all marketing, and that's part of a record, you gotta get it out there, people have gotta hear it, but you could do it in a way that's ...
People say I seem very negative about new music - well, if somebody asks me what I think of Keane, I'll tell 'em. I don't like 'em. I'll obviously take it a step too far and grossly insult the keyboard player's mam or summat, but I'm afraid that's ju...
There were also some cruel reviews by women, but the tone of the male reviewers, sometimes hysterical, was different. I have suffered, but I don't want to name names-but there have been men who have seemed to want to destroy me or my writing, men I d...
For many women, going back to work a few months after having a baby is overwhelming and unmanageable. As strange as it may seem, things get even more difficult for a working mom after the second and third baby arrive. By that time, the romance of bei...
I read somewhere that Mitt and I have a 'storybook marriage.' Well, in the storybooks I read, there were never long, long, rainy winter afternoons in a house with five boys screaming at once. And those storybooks never seemed to have chapters called ...
I see a lot of women around me who seem to stop developing as individuals after marriage and children. I don't know what kinds of pressure they're under, but I think it robs the world of 'the older version of Judy or Wendy,' or whomever. It robs the ...
I just watch movies I like over and over. It seems to be a lot of sci-fi stuff. My favorites are probably - besides the first two 'Alien' films, I watch '2001', I watch 'Star Wars', the first ones, because those actually had a huge effect on me as we...
Jonathan Brewster: [threatening Mortimer] If you tell O'Hara what's in the window seat, I'll tell him what's in the cellar. Mortimer Brewster: Cellar? Jonathan Brewster: There's an elderly gentleman down there who seems to be very dead.
Ben Bradlee: Bernstein, are you sure on this story? Carl Bernstein: Absolutely. Ben Bradlee: Woodward? Carl Bernstein: I'm sure. Ben Bradlee: I'm not. It still seems thin. Howard Simons: Get another source.
[Banner arrives in New York on a motorcycle just as the Chitauri have begun their attack] Bruce Banner: So... this all seems horrible. Black Widow: I've seen worse. Bruce Banner: Sorry. Black Widow: No, we could... use... a little worse.
Esther: It was Judah Ben-Hur I loved. What has become of him? You seem to be now the very thing you set out to destroy. Giving evil for evil. Hatred is turning you to stone. It's as though you had become Messala.
Billy Whistler: Emotions are like work of art. They can be forged they seem just like the original but they are forgery. Virgil Oldman: Forgery. Billy Whistler: Everything can be fake Virgil: joy, pain, hate, illness, recovery... even love.
