Blank sheets of paper are the fertile soil in which we cultivate the world of our imagination. We plant the seeds of dream and we water them with pitchers of dedication, fertilizing with sprinkled pellets of enthusiasm, until they sprout and bring fo...
I can see a scene in my head, and when I try to get it down in words on paper, the words are clunky; the scene is not coming across right. So frustrating. And there are days where it keeps flowing. Open the floodgates, and there it is. Pages and page...
I just start with a pencil and paper. I don't want something too trendy, too fashion-forward. I don't want to make something I consider a regular person couldn't wear with blue jeans. But I don't want to make something that other people make, either ...
I don't feel I write fast. I write in longhand and do so much revision. On the page, it's so old-fashioned. I could write a whole novel on scrap paper, scribbles and things. I keep looking at it and something develops. For me, using a word processor ...
People are going to think I'm morbid, loving all these sad books. I actually don't mind a happy ending in a novel—certainly, it's nice when it happens. But when you've invested so much time and your fingers have pushed through all that paper and yo...
I like to wake up late, around 11 A.M., especially if I have been out the night before. Then I go to brunch with either my friends or my girlfriend. I then like to just chill out: read the papers, read some scripts and then take it very easy. If it's...
As a scholar, you don't want to repeat yourself, ever. You're supposed to say it once, publish it, and then it's published, and you don't say it again. If someone comes and gives a scholarly paper about something they've already published, that's jus...
Albert Camus's 'La Peste' - 'The Plague' - had an enormous impact on me when I read it in high school French class, and I chose my senior yearbook quote from it. In college, I wrote a philosophy class paper on Camus and Sartre, and again chose my yea...
I was creating commitment devices of my own long before I knew what they were. So when I was a starving post-doc at Columbia University, I was deep in a publish-or-perish phase of my career. I had to write five pages a day towards papers, or I would ...
I always start drawing any job by planning out to some degree the locales and trying to nail the characters. If they're existing characters, I'll draw them several times on rough paper just to get a feeling for them. The ideal when you're drawing a c...
When I heard that there were artists, I wished I could some time be one. If I could only make a rose bloom on paper, I thought I should be happy! Or if I could at last succeed in drawing the outline of winter-stripped boughs as I saw them against the...
Janine Melnitz: I've seen TV, I know you can't come in here without a warrant or writ or something! Walter Peck: [holding up papers] Cease and desist all commerce order, seizure of premises and chattels, ban on use of public utilities for unauthorize...
Percy: [When Bard approaches Laketown in his ship] Halt! Goods inspection. Papers please!... Oh, it's you, Bard! Bard the Bowman: Morning, Percy. Percy: Anything to declare? Bard the Bowman: Nothing. But I am cold and tired, and ready for home. Percy...
Peter Warne: I never did like the idea of sitting on newspapers. I did it once, and all the headlines came off on my white pants. On the level! It actually happened. Nobody bought a paper that day. They just followed me around over town and read the ...
Javert: [Valjean slams Javert against the wall, starts to put his own handcuffs on him] Where will you go, Valjean? You don't have papers. Javert: [Valjean slams Javert's head against the wall once more] I'll find you... [another hit against the wall...
[first title card] Title Card: pulp /'p&lp/ n. 1. A soft, moist, shapeless mass of matter. Title Card: 2. A magazine or book containing lurid subject matter and being characteristically printed on rough, unfinished paper. Title Card: American Heritag...
Orphan Leader: They write about our raids in the paper. Fox: Yeah. That's really heavy. The Orphans, right? Yeah, our youth worker, she talks about you guys all the time. Orphan: We ain't got one. Fox: Well, that must be because you guys are so bad, ...
Like most lit nerds, I'm a voracious reader. I never got enough poetry under my belt growing up but I do read it - some of my favorites, Gina Franco and Angela Shaw and Cornelius Eady and Kevin Young, remind me daily that unless the words sing and da...
Writing is hard work, and if anything's true about the process, it's that fact that a good story is hard to find and even trickier to get on paper. What's less romantic than staring alone at a blank screen? And edgy? I've changed the cat little becau...
I love writing, but hate starting. The page is awfully white and it says, 'You may have fooled some of the people some of the time but those days are over, Giftless. I'm not your agent and I'm not your mommy: I'm a white piece of paper. You wanna dan...
I ran from them. Nights, yellow lights scoured sand. What was ever found but women in skirts folded around the men they loved that Friday? No one found me. And how could that have been, here, where even botanical names were recorded and small roads m...
