A Quote by Dodie Smith
My hand is very tired but I want to go on writing. I keep resting and thinking. All day I have been two people - the me imprisoned in yesterday and the me out here on the mound; and now there is a third me trying to get in - the me in what is going to happen next.
Related Quotes
In publishing books and winning awards, it's like you've enjoyed this meal, you know, two months ago. How long can you be nourished by thinking about it? You've already ingested it, and you've excreted it, and that was two months ago. You had this fabulous meal. It's not going to keep you satiated today. You have to go out and get your next meal. For me, that's writing. I have to go out and hunt my next meal.
I think having a good agent is key. I've been with mine for ten years now, and she's very honest with me. There are a lot of times I've sent her books that were not so good because I was tired of writing, or panicked about money, and she's told me flat out, "You don't want this to be your next book. Trust me."
My most recent novel didn't start out scaring me, but as I got deeper into writing it, it scared me. It's not so much where the story's going. It's where it came from. I always come out of it thinking, Okay, that got it all outta me. The next one's gonna be nice and simple, and it's not gonna scare me, and that never seems to happen.
What I would really love to happen to me would be if I came upon an idea that would keep me busy until I die so I wouldn't have to go through the business of thinking up a new book. But I wouldn't mind writing a long book which is going to occupy me for the rest of my life.
If you're a pitcher, and you're pitching and you strike me out and you start celebrating on the mound and showing me off, whenever I get a hit off you, I'm going to go and celebrate, and you shouldn't get mad. If you're a pitcher and strike me out and show me respect and you don't show me up, when I get a homer or a hit, I'm not going to show you up. That's what I believe.
For me, writing is a way of thinking. I write in a journal a lot. I'm a very impatient person, so writing and meditation allow me to slow down and watch my mind; they are containers that keep me in place, hold me still.
When people ask me what on earth I want to keep two cats for I tell them I keep them to do my resting for me.
I spend my day trying to make myself as happy and relaxed as I can be. If I have positions going against me, I get right out; if they are going for me, I keep them.
My mother ran the household. In grade school, I came home crying one day. She said, 'What's wrong?' and I said, 'This kid said he was going to jump on me.' She grabbed me and slammed me on the floor. 'If you don't go out there and stand up for yourself, it's going to be me and you.' I didn't want that to happen.
All my stuff is pretty seamless - like now, while I'm touring [Yesterday I Sang The Blues], today I'm going to go in the studio, I'm writing my next one. For me it's continual.
I do remember, one time, a man came to me after the students began to work in Mississippi and he said the white people were getting tired and they were getting tense and anything might happen. Well, I asked him "how long he thinks we had been getting tired"? I have been tired for 46 years and my parents was tired before me and their parents were tired, and I have always wanted to do something that would help some of the things I would see going on among Negroes that I didn't like and I don't like now.
My wife is always trying to get rid of me. The other day she told me to put the garbage out. I said to her I already did. She told me to go and keep an eye on it.
I have got this letter which actually goes out the day after I die. It has already been written. And it says that: "Yesterday I died". And then it says: "That's bad news for me, but it's not bad news for you, the shareholders of Berkshire". And then I go on and explain what is going to happen. I know that is one time when they will be really interested in hearing from me.
I think a lot of people go into filmmaking thinking, "How can I make a career?" And so when they make their first film, they make it thinking, "Well, this'll be the one that gets me to the place where I can make the second film the way I want to make it, and that'll get me to the place where I can make $100 million on the third film." And I thought, "Well, if I put sustainability at the bottom of my priority list, then what opportunities is that going to free me up to pursue?" And that's what I've always done.
I led the NFL in attempts the past two years and they really didn’t go out and get a quarterback to help me so I knew it’s going to be all on me again. I could see my mortality as a football player, that I’m not going to be able to do this much longer. It just became obvious to me that playing football for me is not going to be fun, not something I’m going to enjoy and it’s time for me to do something different.
For me, I always feel that I'm not sure what's going to happen next year or what's going to happen the year after or what's in the future. So I really kind of just focus on the project at hand and try to do the best that I can. And that, for me, is as much as I can control.
Related Authors
Charles Bukowski Quotes
American
Novelist
Charles Dickens Quotes
English
Novelist
Chuck Palahniuk Quotes
American
Novelist
Ernest Hemingway Quotes
American
Novelist
George Eliot Quotes
British
Novelist
George Orwell Quotes
British
Novelist
George R. R. Martin Quotes
American
Novelist
Jane Austen Quotes
British
Novelist
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
German
Novelist
Margaret Atwood Quotes
Canadian
Novelist
Nicholas Sparks Quotes
American
Novelist
Paulo Coelho Quotes
Brazilian
Novelist
Sarah Dessen Quotes
American
Novelist
Stephenie Meyer Quotes
American
Novelist
Veronica Roth Quotes
American
Novelist
Victor Hugo Quotes
French
Novelist