Adolescence is the most Technicolor time in our lives. It's the time when adulthood is new and we care most about it. It contains the highs and lows that excite me as a writer.
If I'd had more time or been a better writer, I would have tried to put the same ideas and experiences into a novel. But I didn't so I slapped it up on the Web.
You have to work hard to get to the top of your game. I think every writer has doubts! I still do all the time.
The deaf community is nearly never portrayed accurately on television/film because most writers never took the time to immerse themselves in the deaf culture before portraying it on television. They also never got to know their deaf actors.
The novelist's obligation to remake the sensuous texture of a vanished world is also the historian's. The strongest fiction writers often do deep research to make the thought and utterances of lost time credible.
I was a 'learn by doing' writer - I never took any formal writing classes. So it took a long time to figure things out and find my voice.
I think I'm also more open to other writers being present and listening to other opinions, whereas before I was going through my angsty teen years while making records.
I'm not your expert on Africa or animals or whatever. I'm not a travel writer or maker of documentaries. I was someone who doesn't know very much, trying to communicate.
I think people read travel books either because they intend to take that trip, or because they would never take that trip. In a sense, as a writer you are doing the travel for the reader.
The only thing I know anything about are my own fantasies and anxieties. I don't trust my eyes. I consider myself to be a short-story writer.
Apart from a few simple principles, the sound and rhythm of English prose seem to me matters where both writers and readers should trust not so much to rules as to their ears.
The hardest thing to teach young writers is that it's wonderful to tell your truth. And that's what you should do. But it damn well better be beautiful.
Annie Kinsella: Ray! He's my favorite writer too, but what's Terence Mann got to do with baseball?
Andre: Justice doesn't mean the bad guy goes to jail, it just means that someone pays for the crime.
Tito: Nobody cares what I do. Why should I bother coming to school?
Andre: She can't even look at me because I look like my dad.
Satine: Please tell me you're not one of Toulouse's oh so talented, charmingly bohemian, tragically impoverished writers?
Miles Raymond: Hey, what should I wear? Jack: I don't know, something casual but nice. They think you're a writer.
I'm not a huge fan of prequels and sequels and the cynical rush to make money on the back of books by other writers who are now dead.
I never became a writer for the money. I am a poet first. Even getting published is a miracle for poets.
The career of a writer is comparable to that of a woman of easy virtue. You write first for pleasure, later for the pleasure of others and finally for money.
