Woodworking requires a completely different kind of thinking and problem-solving ability than writing. With writing, you take a set of facts and ideas, and you reason your way forward to a story that pulls them together. With woodworking, you start w...
I do think that even with entertainment and telling stories, people in the entertainment industry have such a beautiful position in the world to speak about things that they're passionate about in a way that can grab people more than just sitting and...
Operating-room errors hold a special terror for patients, if only because they seem like the most avoidable kind of complications. The occasional horror stories of patients who have the wrong leg removed or the wrong knee replaced generate the most h...
I usually start with an ending, then outline high points of things that happen, and kind of make up the rest as I go along. Occasionally, the characters surprise me, and I wonder how we got here. Other times, the characters are stubborn and won't do ...
Cinema is a visual language, and you're always looking for visual metaphors for things. You know, if I was writing a play about Howard Hughes, I could have him give a monologue about how he's terrified to touch a doorknob. But on screen, you know, wo...
I'm always conscious when I'm writing a story that the women in my books need to save themselves. They don't need to be scooped up into a man's arms and carried off into the sunset. But I also can't stand when writers feature a really strong female c...
I write simply because I hear voices of people in my head who won't give me peace until I convey their stories to the rest of the world. Seriously. They've always been with me. While other girls played with dolls, and my brothers with Hot Wheels, I w...
After I wrote my memoir, 'A Long Way Gone,' I was a bit exhausted. I didn't want to write another memoir; I felt that it might not be sane for one to speak about himself for many, many, many years in a row. At the same time, I felt the story of 'Radi...
From 1936 on, I have taken more falls than any other 20 comedians put together. From the time I was 21, I've taken them on everything from clay courts to cement to wood floors, coming off pianos, going out a two-story window, landing on Dean, falling...
The biggest challenge for me has been in coping with my perfectionism. I have a stiflingly hard time moving forward in a project if it's not 'just right' all along the way. The trap I so easily fall into is rewriting and rewriting the same scenes ove...
Back when I was 16, when I should have been doing normal high school things, I availed myself of my brand new driver's license to spend as much time as possible in Milwaukee's Renaissance Book Shop, a tumbledown five-story warehouse that the city was...
Since I'm a story-oriented critic, sometimes it's difficult to discuss issues without defining them. At the same time, I try not to give away anything that hasn't been given away in first half, in TV commercials, or that isn't obvious from the set-up...
Ralphie: Heh, I was just kidding, even though Schwartz is getting one. I guess I'd just like some Tinker Toys. Ralphie as Adult: [narrating] I couldn't believe my own ears. Tinker Toys? She'd never buy it.
Ralphie: Scut Farkus! Ralphie as Adult: [narrating] Scut Farkus! What a rotten name! We were trapped. There he stood, between us and the alley. Scut Farkus staring out at us with his yellow eyes. He had yellow eyes! So, help me, God! Yellow eyes!
Ralphie as Adult: [narrating] Over the years I got to be quite a connoisseur of soap. My personal preference was for Lux, but I found Palmolive had a nice, piquant after-dinner flavor - heady, but with just a touch of mellow smoothness. Life Buoy, on...
Mother: Is this another one of your silly puzzles? Mr. Parker: Yeah, another one of my silly puzzles. This one could be worth FIFTY THOUSAND BUCKS. Mother: What is it this time? Mr. Parker: Name the great characters in American literature. Mother: Vi...
Donnie: [to Pommeroy, about the Graham Greene story] Well, they say it right when they flood the house, and they tear it to shreds that, like, uh, destruction is a form of creation. So the fact that they burn the money is ironic. They just want to se...
Sam: You're in it right now, aren't you? Andrew Largeman: What? Sam: My mom always says that, when she can see I'm like working something out in my head, she's like, 'you're in it right now' and I'm looking at you're telling this story, and you're de...
Walter Burns: You've got the brain of a pancake. This isn't just a story you're covering - it's a revolution. This is the greatest yarn in journalism since Livingstone discovered Stanley. Hildy Johnson: It's the other way around. Walter Burns: Oh, we...
Louis: Thirty years had passed, yet her body remained that of an eternal child. Her eyes alone told the story of her age, staring out from under her doll-like curls, with a questioning that will one day need an answer.
Chief Inspector Uhl: As a boy, I'm told, he had a chance encounter with a travelling magician. One version of the story was that the man himself vanished... along with the tree. People began to think he had some sort of special power... or at least t...
