Number three: Stay away from the church. In the battle over science vs. religion, science offers credible evidence for all the serious claims it makes. The church says, 'Oh, it’s right here in this book, see? The one written by people who thought t...
Read a lot. But read as a writer, to see how other writers are doing it. And make your knowledge of literature in English as deep and broad as you can. In workshops, writers are often told to read what is being written now, but if that is all you rea...
Honestly, I try and stay away from what's been written about me, because if you let that stuff get to you and it's not true it can drive you crazy. One thing that I have heard recently which is not true, I didn't say it, is that I believe I was quote...
To witness the awe of human beings delighting in their own hands forming the written word was humbling and he understood it profoundly at that moment watching those two, with the ancient land around them, in their traditional robes and the resting ca...
What is seen is not the Truth What is cannot be said Trust comes not without seeing Nor understanding without words The wise comprehends with knowledge To the ignorant it is but a wonder Some worship the formless God Some worship his various forms In...
A month into the semester, I would start showing up twenty minutes late to class again. The rewards weren't enough to keep me on task, and life got in the way. My mind wandered to the future, postcollege, when I'd create my own schedule that served m...
Several people, not just reviewers, took me to task for writing about what they called the working classes - something I've been doing for 40 years. I thought that was contemptible - what do they want to do, ghettoize the working class as a subject? ...
Myths, whether in written or visual form, serve a vital role of asking unanswerable questions and providing unquestionable answers. Most of us, most of the time, have a low tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty. We want to reduce the cognitive diss...
A lot of pieces I have written have to do with courage. As a result, people think that I am naturally brave. But what people don't know, is that I grew up with phobias and many fears. I was scared of everything. So, I write of courage not because I h...
The perfect life, the perfect lie, I realised after Christmas, is one which prevents you from doing that which you would ideally have done (painted, say, or written unpublishable poetry) but which, in fact, you have no wish to do.
In the books I have written, I have created in my mind a universe. My kids say I have a village in my head and I live in that village, and it's true. When I start writing a book, characters from previous books reappear. All my emotions, my mind, my h...
I changed my writing style deliberately. My first two novels were written in a very self-consciously literary way. After I embraced gay subject matter, which was then new, I didn't want to stand in its way. I wanted to make the style as transparent a...
When people say, "I've told you fifty times," / They mean to scold, and very often do; / When poets say, "I've written fifty rhymes," / They make you dread that they 'II recite them too; In gangs of fifty, thieves commit their crimes; / At fifty love...
A short story I have written long ago would barge into my house in the middle of the night, shake me awake and shout, 'Hey,this is no time for sleeping! You can't forget me, there's still more to write!' Impelled by that voice, I would find myself wr...
Welcome to Book-a-holic Anonymous. Hi, I'm g-lyn and I addictive to the written word. I love the smell of the blackest ink sliding across lightly texture paper. My eyes squint against the lost of time within the pages of story. Sorry to say that I do...
Written over the gate here are the words 'Leave every hope behind, ye who enter.' Only think what a relief that is! For what is hope? A form of moral responsibility. Here there is no hope, and consequently no duty, no work, nothing to be gained by pr...
A Dr of the veterinary college at Utrecht... finds it a less arduous task to mount Pegasus (evidently borrowed from the veterinary school) and to proclaim in his how, during his bold fight to the top of the chemical Parnassus, the atoms appeared to h...
I always swore I would never write a book. But I read Clare Balding's and it was really interesting and so prettily written and lovely and not too revealing. I went to her book launch and met her editor who said 'why don't you think about it? You can...
The very first day that Hillary came over, we were working on a song called 'All We'd Ever Need.' But we never even thought about it until we had written 5, 6, 7 songs. Then we played our first show, and we all enjoyed it so much. We felt like it was...
If we recognize that Spirit is all powerful, and cannot be hurt, and that only Spirit exists, then nothing that happens here matters. And we see everyone and everything from the point of wholeness. Even the ‘deceitful’ thing that happened is prob...
Jackson: [trying to tell in which grave the gold is hidden] There's no number... there's a name... it's written... [chokes and gasps a couple of times, then] Jackson: Water! Tuco: You talk first, I'll give you water later! Sad Hill Cemetery, okay, in...
