As a journalist, it is so easy to get hardened when you see so many stories that are disturbing. Sometimes it's just your survival mechanism that makes you hardened to some of it.
To me, 'Blue Like Jazz' is a quintessential American story. So many people are just like Don - raised Christian and go off to college only to abandon their beliefs in order to fit in or be accepted.
When we read, we are doing more than delectating words on a page stories, characters, images, notions. We are communing with the mind of the author.
When I started out, I really struggled as a comic because no one knew who I was, and sometimes I was telling stories, so it would take a while for people to get on board for things.
You open a section of 'The New York Times,' and there's a review or a story on a choreographer or a dancer, and there's an informative, clear image of a dancer. This is, in my view, not an interesting photograph.
Most of us are responsible most of the time, or we would not have come this far, it is remembering to not tell the victim story when we are under pressure that makes you a leader.
It's like, I don't think you understand, Michael Jackson's bedroom is two stories and it has, like, three bathrooms and this and that. So, when I slept in his bedroom, yes, but you understand the whole scenario.
The hardest thing about writing a script is you finish it, but it doesn't mean anything. It's not like a novel or short story - a script is meant to be made into a movie.
The story of Warner Brothers' movie, 'Mildred Pierce,' recounts the enormous and unrewarded sacrifices that a mother (Joan Crawford) makes for her spoiled, greedy daughter (Ann Blythe).
I like the idea of young readers using my stories as a sort of moral gym, where they can flex and develop their newly developed moral muscle.
I've always been interested in setting my stories against a big event, the importance of which my younger readers are slowly becoming aware of as they move into their teens.
If we get caught up in a story, it's because we've started to care about the characters, and that can only happen if we've moved beneath the surface.
The type of stories I write are about young people grappling with the biggest problems in their lives, often problems that are bigger than they're actually capable of solving.
I can't think of a major story that we have broken that was incorrect. But we have had to correct some things that were false; we have had to retract things.
I believe there is a hero in each of us. The best books are the ones that remind us of who we already are and empower us to embrace our own story.
You have only so many chances to tell stories. I didn't want to be forever wedded to one form of storytelling when there are so many out there.
Now, what tends to happen is that the stories get hyped. And the medicines are not quite as revolutionary and as dramatic as they seem to be. But, certainly, various phases of this problem are being attacked by the pharmaceutical companies.
Stop beating yourself up over all the days you didn’t work on your story. Focus on what you can do today. Sit down, and write.
Writing is an extremely rewarding and humbling process, and I've learned to go with it, that even if it feels absolutely impossible, I will find a way to tell the next story.
We shouldn't hide behind anger or anonymity when reliving the past because all that’s happened and all those who belong in our past are part of our story.
Actually, that's one of the things I was thinking about writing a story about me, loosely based or autobiographical. I just don't want to be like some people that are in their twenties and writing autobiographies.