A Quote by Alex Lemon
I found it incredibly challenging to write clear prose that had the dynamism that I wanted.
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Poetry has an indirect way of hinting at things. Poetry is feminine. Prose is masculine. Prose, the very structure of it, is logical; poetry is basically illogical. Prose has to be clear-cut; poetry has to be vague - that's its beauty, its quality. Prose simply says what it says; poetry says many things. Prose is needed in the day-to-day world, in the marketplace. But whenever something of the heart has to be said, prose is always found inadequate - one has to fall back to poetry.
I always was interested in prose. As a teenager, I published short stories. And I always wanted to write the long short story, I wanted to write a novel. Now that I have attained, shall I say, a respectable age, and have had experiences, I feel much more interested in prose, in the novel. I feel that in a novel, for example, you can get in toothbrushes and all the paraphernalia that one finds in dally life, and I find this more difficult in poetry.
I was pretty happy with how my career had gone, mainly because of the enormous freedom I've had to write what I've wanted to write. I had a very clear picture of who I was as a writer.
Nothing is more satisfying than to write a good sentence. It is no fun to write lumpishly, dully, in prose the reader must plod through like wet sand. But it is a pleasure to achieve, if one can, a clear running prose that is simple yet full of surprises. This does not just happen. It requires skill, hard work, a good ear, and continued practice.
There is poetry even in prose, in all the great prose which is not merely utilitarian or didactic: there exist poets who write in prose or at least in more or less apparent prose; millions of poets write verses which have no connection with poetry.
All my friends who wanted to write had got nowhere trying to write the great European novel. So I deliberately steered clear of that and set out to write something story-led.
I've very rarely worked with somebody that had such a clear idea of what Alejandro Amenábar wanted to do and what he wanted to achieve. The guy is incredibly prepared. He was clearly making a movie for himself and his own dream. I just tried to be a part of that dream. It's a rare opportunity.
I wanted to play incredibly challenging, multifaceted characters. Because we are all a puzzle.
You don't have to be as good a writer to write a song; it's a very different process to writing straight prose. To learn how to write prose takes a lot of years of practice.
I wanted to be a musician. I just wanted to be famous because I wanted to escape from what I felt was my limitation in life... And I wanted to write music, and I didn’t know what I was doing and I never had the technique or understanding of it... But I’ve always played the piano and I can improvise on the piano, but the problem is that I can’t write down what I write. I can read music but I can’t write numbers.
I don't write out of fear. I write out of a strong urge to meet death on its own eternal terms, because the fact is that if you write as little as a page of prose-even bad prose-that is eternal.
I have written some poetry and two prose books about baseball, but if I had been a rich man, I probably would not have written many of the magazine essays that I have had to do. But, needing to write magazine essays to support myself, I looked to things that I cared about and wanted to write about, and certainly baseball was one of them.
I was clear that I wanted to do music and I wanted to write songs. But I wasn't clear about how I was going to make that happen. I wrote loads of songs but didn't want to show them to anyone.
If I wanted to write, I had to be willing to develop a kind of concentration found mostly in people awaiting execution. I had to learn technique and surrender my ignorance.
When I ventured into writing at the age of 17, I wanted to be a good and successful writer. I just wanted to write good stuff - poems, prose, stories, essays, everything.
When I first wanted to be a writer, I learned to write prose by reading poetry.
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