Writing can be taught or learned in the vacuum. We must say to students in every area of knowledge: "This is a how other people have written about this subject. Read it; study it; think about it. You can do it too.
He had made a fairly unambiguous pass at her, as she was getting out of the cab. But event that had come to nothing. Sheba said that she had sensed something resentful about him, as if he begrudged her for having the power to attract him.
An author entices the readers with their words, and it is painful for them to even lose a sentence. But films and books are two different mediums and should be dealt differently. What works in a book might not work for a film. When I saw 'Anna Kareni...
I remember how a man once got in touch with me to tell me that he was so engrossed in my book that he had to take a day off from work just so that he could finish reading it. Such kind of responses from my readers is extremely endearing, and it keeps...
During the summers, when I'm in Maine, I work at a desk that's located beyond all tendrilly wi-fi reaches. It takes me a few days to break the constant e-mail-checking habit, then I find I don't want to check my e-mail ever, and often don't for days.
The relevant questions now are: How do we move beyond coal? How do we bring new jobs to the coal fields and retrain coal miners for other work? How do we inspire entrepreneurialism and self-reliance in people whose lives have been dependent on the pa...
Writing fiction is the 'job' I try to keep at the center of things. The movie stuff has been a wonderful accident, though not entirely bizarre, either, as I have done some work in film before, and even directed a ridiculous, cable-access feature back...
When I'm writing a novel or doing other serious writing work, I do it on a schedule that dictates writing either 2,000 words a day or writing until noon. After I hit whichever mark comes first, then I can give my attention to everything else I have t...
I've written books as acts of discovery: things I need to know and that I need to touch. And it's very dangerous work to deal with the most toxic internal elements... I feel like Madame Curie at my computer. I feel like I should be hemorrhaging from ...
There's a bizarre prejudice that exists in the New York publishing establishment that any work outside the tri-state area is being done by trained chimpanzees, that geography screens out sensibility. There's an idea that all Los Angeles writing is ab...
I've continued to write fiction since being in television. TV is a different kind of writing, but it's all writing. It was David Milch of 'Deadwood' who helped me to see it that way. We later collaborated on the short-lived 'John from Cincinnati,' bu...
Don't ever, ever, believe anyone who tells you that you can just get by, by doing the easiest thing possible. Because there's always somebody behind you who really wants to do what you're doing. And they're going to work harder than you if you're not...
I'm as much my own master as anyone can be, without being the master of others. I can write anywhere - all I need is a couple of hours of solitude and a computer, and I can write a chapter. Since my work is portable, I can live anywhere I like.
Mother Earth needs us to keep our covenant. We will do this in courts, we will do this on our radio station, and we will commit to our descendants to work hard to protect this land and water for them. Whether you have feet, wings, fins, or roots, we ...
There are no self-proclaimed villains, only regiments of self-proclaimed saints. Victorious historians rule where good or evil lies. We abjure labels. We fight for money and an indefinable pride. The politics, the ethics, the moralities, are irreleva...
Rather than freedom traditional constraints, then, girls were free "choose" them. Yet, the line between "get to" and "have to" blurs awfully fast.
Why is it the songs all end with the good people winning, but in life they don't?" They don't make songs when the good lose," I muttered. "They make war chants against the bad. So there won't be any songs for us.
The war has changed you, too, Caroline. Your faith is stronger, your compassion deeper, your love more intense than ever before. It's as if all the qualities I saw in you and fell in love with have been refined and purified.
A horse blanket, Mel? I remembered what I was wearing. 'It tore in half when Hrani tried washing it. She was going to mend it. This piece was too small for a horse, but it was just right for me.' Bran laughed a little unsteadly. 'Mel. A .
(M)uch as we might imagine we can leave the past behind, it has a nasty way of pressing its hoary old face against the window just as we were sitting down to the feast.
What is it in humans that makes us so eager to believe ill of one another? ... What makes us so hungry for it? Failed idealism, he suspected. We disappoint ourselves and then look around for other failures to convince ourselves: it's not just me. (15...
