With acting, you gotta wait until someone gives you a role in a play or movie. With writing, you're not dependent on others, you don't have to wait. You can sit down and just create.
Most of physics is about energy, and physicists understand inefficiencies. I wanted to write a book about our energy options in a neutral, human-accessible form.
When I teach writing, I have a mantra: 'Be a first-rate version of yourself, and not a second-rate version of another writer.'
Most of the people who write to me are really clever, really engaged. They just want to say that they have read my book and liked it.
I think a lot of times stereotypes come when there are disconnected white writers who maybe have two or three black friends, and they write black characters, and they put them in situations that are ridiculous.
I am writing just to inspire you, encourage you, empower you, and give you hope when you are fighting your life's battle.
Writing seems to free them (students) of the idea that math is a collection of right answers own by the teacher – a body of knowledge that she will dispense in chunks and that they have to swallow and digest.
Writing is like bungee jumping for the soul...you take a deep breath, plunge into the abyss and hope the rope tethering you to the real world doesn't snap.
I do not believe in pure idioms. I think there is naturally a desire, for whoever speaks or writes, to sign in an idiomatic, irreplaceable manner.
In Algeria, I had begun to get into literature and philosophy. I dreamed of writing-and already models were instructing the dream, a certain language governed it.
When you're in the middle of writing a song, you can come up with this whole web of stuff only you know how to get through. That's very entertaining for me to do that.
I never plan a structure. I like surprises. I'm quite disciplined and sit at my desk every day and just write.
I guess I don't have much interest in writing straight drama. So whatever subject matter I choose will ultimately be dealt with in a comic way.
I don't really get things very... intuitively. I mean, I don't immediately understand things. The only way I really get it is by writing it down.
We must begin to make what I call 'conscious choices', and to really recognize that we are the same. It's from that place in my heart that I write my songs.
Stereotypes, they're sensual, cultural weapons. That's the way that we attack people. At an artistic level, stereotypes are terrible writing.
I think one of the paradoxes of writing fiction is when people enjoy it, they want it to be real. So they look for connections.
I always individuate myself from other writers who say they would die if they couldn't write. For me, I'd die if I couldn't read.
When I read Toni Morrison and Sandra Cisneros as a freshman at Rutgers, it all clicked - that writing was all I wanted to do. It became my calling.
I am a writer. I could not afford to take 15 months off from my writing career to play detective.
That's the way I will write characters, put a fair amount of myself in them, and then everyone else who was like that person, I will pick and choose.
