R. H. Dana Quotes
I'm learning to play by the rules. I sort of hate to think of it that way, but that's how it is. I'm really learning to function out there and in such a way that I don't need to drink.
Most of the time I think we're really pretty positive and optimistic, and we're so lucky to have the life that we have and had with him.
Just when you think you're coming out and you think, 'OK, I see the light at the end of the tunnel,' then I got this diagnosis.
Some things you can fix, and some things you can't. And I just think it is a shame to walk away from the things you can.
Guys don't go for me. Period. I don't distract them. They don't sneak glances in my direction. They don't think of me when I'm not standing right in front of them. I'm scenery. I'm background.
Friends, I was pretty sure, lift their friends up; they don't weigh them down like a sack full of stones
The Little Drummer Boy was playing in the background for what seemed like the third time in a row. I fought off an urge to beat that Little Drummer Boy senseless with his own drumsticks.
When there's something or someone, when there's anything that makes you happy, you don't let a continent or an ocean or an empty pocket keep you apart
Precision about language can be really, really annoying. It can make you miss the point of what the other person is saying altogether.
Transferring our sovereignty and decisionmaking power to the WTO, to the United Nations, or any other international body is not in the long-term interests of our people.
And let us be frank, the security threats that emanate from our ports come from foreign cargo.
Have you ever closed your eyes and listened to the sound of your own mother's voice?
When you speak a new language you must see if you can translate all of the poetry of your old language into the new one.
I know, logically, about the fact that there are fans of my work in America, but it's hard for that feeling to sink in.
The novel is about, for me, sustained and organized looking. I do think that people have a hunger for a sustained engagement, that concentration that the book can offer.
I am always trying to do something new and different. The first step is curiosity, questions. You pay attention to what fascinates you. If you can't shake it, there is something there.
In order to be a living, breathing thing, a novel has to be failed in some kind of way. Or at least that's how I keep writing them.
I have to say that movies have as much impact on me as music. And that I learned as much about narrative from movies as I did from reading novels, how to arrange stories, how to juxtapose things.
A good novel should be deeply unsettling - its satisfactions should come from its authenticity and its formal coherence. We must feel something crucial is at stake.
Yes, I did try acting when I was in high school and I was terrible at it. So I definitely have had the experience of being bad at artistic endeavor.
I am a great procrastinator. When the writing is going really well, the laundry piles up.
Getting an audience requires luck as well as talent. Some artists are private and shy. It costs them too much.
I like to buy books for the kids in my family. I guess that's why they call me the 'mean' aunt.
It takes a long time to write a novel when you have to keep interrupting your work to earn money.
That was one of the reasons I became a writer - I never really had that many friends. I would read a lot, and listen to music. And that was my life.
I think there's a lot to be learned from pop culture. But at the same time I see the dangers of using it in an exclusive way to construct meaning in your life.
Tell me it's forbidden, unthinkable, and that's where I want to go. Because the chances are it's complicated, and the complications are meaningful.
Even a documentary portrait of a person that tries to be very accurate is shaped by the filmmaker in so many ways.
Even if we try to see people in our lives accurately, it is distorted by our own wants and prejudices and experiences.
I am, it seems, interested in people with multiple identities. I think we all have multiple identities.
I think most writers have to have a practice of writing. For me it is very early in the morning. I try to make it a separate world from the rest of my life.
My teaching exists in a different part of my brain. However, I am lucky enough to teach very smart graduate students.
I always think the novelist should go to the culture's dark places and poke around. Pose a lot of hard questions.
I take the outline from a real person as inspiration, but the in-line is totally made up. Which is why I usually invent imaginary names.
You are always working towards the moments in which characters experience reckonings or insight or change. I like to track them past those moments.
Usually there is a paradox in what a character wants. A conflict is built deeply within them. And then you put them in motion, throw everything at them until they reveal themselves further.
When I write characters, I need to hear their voice. As soon as I get them speaking, and I feel how they use language, I understand who they are and what they want.
The writer has to take risks and go somewhere full of mystery and possibility for the novel to deepen over the years it takes to write it.
There are lots of authentic, moving characters in so-called systems novels, just as there are certainly deep structural ideas in some character-driven novels.
My teaching forces me to articulate what I think works in a piece of fiction and how I think it works. All of that gives me energy as a writer.
Over a third of the Newenhan population was under eighteen,which didn't make his job any easier, the hormonally challenged being terminally and all too often fatally prone to acts of stupidity.
