A Quote by E. L. Doctorow
It's like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
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Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
E.L. Doctorow said once said that 'Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.' You don't have to see where you're going, you don't have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you. This is right up there with the best advice on writing, or life, I have ever heard.
Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you're doing - none of that is writing. Writing is writing. Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
Can I confess something? I tell you this as an artist, I think you'll understand. Sometimes when I'm driving on the road at night I see two headlights coming toward me. Fast. I have this sudden impulse to turn the wheel quickly, head-on into the oncoming car. I can anticipate the explosion. The sound of shattering glass. The flames rising out of the flowing gasoline.
Driving a race car isn't too far a cry from driving any other sports car, but driving one through Africa in the middle of the night offers a wide scree of new sensations.
I love driving. I still drive a 1993 Toyota Camry. I do want to get an electric car, but it's less of a carbon footprint if you keep your old, fuel-efficient car on the road than if you say 'build me a whole new car.'
Stop," I said. "Please do not further endorken yourself to me. You have great hair and a car that is most fly, and you have just saved me with your mad ninja driving skills, so do not sully your heroic hottie image in my mind by further reciting your nerdy scholastic agenda. Don't tell me what you're studying, Steve, tell me what's in your soul. What haunts you?" And he was like, "Dude, you need to cut back on the caffeine.
Honestly, the average American spends about 52 minutes a day in commute traffic. And as much as I love driving my car and many people like driving their car, commuting has never been fun for me.
Getting into a space suit and going outside, to me, getting your peripheral vision involved and looking at the Earth was a whole different experience than looking through the window. And it's kind of the same on earth. If you're driving in a car and you see like a beautiful sunset or landscape, it looks so much better if you stop and get out and kind of take it all in and that's kind of what it's like doing a spacewalk.
Do you want to tear your life apart and get rid of everything you've known as a lifestyle? Like seeing your family? Being with your friends? A fishing trip? A hunting trip? A night's sleep?
Never take more than your share - whether of the road in driving your car, of chairs on a boat or seats on a train, or food at the table.
Many conservatives, I think, see action on climate change as really an attack on a way of life. That`s really a hard pill to swallow, that the whole way that I have created my life is wrong, you`re saying, that I shouldn`t have this house in the suburb, I shouldn`t be driving this car.
The real value in everything you do is in the details. I just like that quote. A very similar way to say the same thing. If you're washing dishes you pay attention to washing dishes. If you're driving a car, you're paying attention to driving the car.
The first car I purchased was for my father. I bought him a truck. I didn't want to see myself driving around in a nicer car than him. I wanted him to feel like he's accomplished a lot, too, which he has. He's put me in a great position.
It's like driving your car. If you drive too fast on the highway, you will topple, so you better maintain your speed. Life is similar to that, and that's the way you have to control your head.
You look at driving down the road, night after night, tryin' to make a town, getting $25 - that's hard times. It's our duty to make it good times for the fans that pay their money to see us perform each and every night.
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