A Quote by Donald Ray Pollock
Probably because I personally knew at least six or seven people in Ross County who died from overdoses in the last three years. The heroin epidemic is just too aggravating and sad and unsettling for even someone like me to live with and think about for the time it would take to write a book dealing with it.
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For me, I never knew what addiction was. I just knew my heroes, like [New York Dolls guitarist] Johnny Thunders, did heroin. I didn't have a father, it looked good to me. If I had read Johnny Thunders' book The Heroin Diaries, I don't think I would have done heroin.
How does the [New York] Times treat White pathology? They reported an epidemic of heroin addiction in the Philadelphia suburbs. which included emergency admissions and overdoses; these White people in the suburbs were doing heroin like it was going out of style. I counted the words: the article consisted of 200 words. "Heroin Epidemic" in the back section. Out here in California, the typical drug addict is a housewife or suburban White woman.
I never thought that it would take me so long to do something. I thought everything was temporary and sometimes the best thing you have working in your favor is a bad sense of time. In order to sit down and write a book that takes six years you have to have a screwed up sense of time because that's too daunting. No one is going to pick up a pen and a piece of paper and say, "Okay, six years, here we go."
I write a lot of material you've never heard that live inside my sadness. You'll hear a song that lasts six to seven minutes of just beautiful sadness. But I can't just go out on the stage to ask five thousand people to be sad with me for seven straight minutes.
I don't think anything I've written has been done in under six or eight drafts. Usually it takes me a few years to write a book. 'World's Fair' was an exception. It seemed to be a particularly fluent book as it came. I did it in seven months. I think what happened in that case is that God gave me a bonus book.
We are all here on this planet, as it were, as tourists. None of us can live here forever. The longest we might live is a hundred years. So while we are here we should try to have a good heart and to make something positive and useful of our lives. Whether we live just a few years or a whole century, it would be truly regrettable and sad if we were to spend that time aggravating the problems that afflict other people, animals, and the environment. The most important things is to be a good human being.
A lot of my close friends have committed suicide or died of heroin overdoses.
We worked on The Perfect Storm, and I'll never forget, Wolfgang Petersen would talk about a moment. Like a non-speaking moment, where we'd all be sitting around eating dinner, and it would probably last maybe four seconds on screen. But he would sit there and talk about it for about 10 minutes. He knew what piece of the puzzle that scene would be, and if it were six seconds, it would be too long. If it were three seconds, it wouldn't be enough. I'm always turned on with people's enthusiasm like that.
If I knew that today would be the last time I’d see you, I would hug you tight and pray the Lord be the keeper of your soul. If I knew that this would be the last time you pass through this door, I’d embrace you, kiss you, and call you back for one more. If I knew that this would be the last time I would hear your voice, I’d take hold of each word to be able to hear it over and over again. If I knew this is the last time I see you, I’d tell you I love you, and would not just assume foolishly you know it already.
Now, everybody knows the basic erogenous zones. You got one, two, three, four, five, six, and seven. ... OK, now most guys will hit one, two, three and then go to seven and set up camp. ... You want to hit 'em all and you wanna mix 'em up. You gotta keep 'em on their toes. ... You could start out with a little one. A two. A one, two, three. A three. A five. A four. A three, two. Two. A two, four, six. Two, four, six. Four. Two. Two. Four, seven! Five, seven! Six, seven! Seven! Seven! Seven! Seven! Seven! Seven! Seven! Seven! Seven! [holds up seven fingers]
I don't think about the reader in any conscious way that impacts the writing, as far as, Hey, most readers would like this! But at the same time, if it were presented to me: "John, you're going to write a novel. It's going to take you a few years. When you're done with it, there's a law that no one's allowed to read it." I don't think I would write it. I want someone to read it!
I told myself that if I hoped to write a book that helped people to take a good look at some of the names that have been written on their nametags, I would need to do the same. I had to write Hello, My Name Is from a place of authenticity, even vulnerability, being willing to let God show me areas of my life that have been incorrectly shaped by false identities I've allowed to hang around for too long. I truly felt like, 'if this book is helping me, then it's going to help someone else.'
An actor's career doesn't feel like just one career to me. It feels like about five or six. Because every six or seven years, you look in the mirror and you have a completely different product.
What you are inferring is, If we were to legalise heroin tomorrow everybody would use heroin. How many people here would start using heroin? I bet nobody would. Oh yeah, I need the government to take care of me. I don't want to use heroin, so I need these laws.
I am 55 years old now. It takes three years to write one book. I don't know how many books I will be able to write before I die. It is like a countdown. So with each book I am praying - please let me live until I am finished.
I would be researching seventeenth-century garden design or I would be doing something with Pepys, but I just kept using all of it to write about Margaret Cavendish. It took me a long time to realize that I just wanted to write a book about her. Years.
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