A Quote by J. D. Salinger
Oh, I don’t know. That digression business got on my nerves. I don’t know. The trouble with me is, I like it when somebody digresses. It’s more interesting and all.
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Nobody knows I'm different. Or they may know, but they don't know how different and they don't know what this thing is that's driving me because I can't... this is... these are charges ... which I understand having got two children of my own and having had these mad thoughts myself that you know, I've got to get out there and do something. I don't know what it is, but it's got to be interesting.
It's interesting when you write something for somebody else, and then you're like, 'Oh man, I just laid my whole trip on them, and they don't even know!'
But I sent letters to people in the music business. And one day I got a phone call from somebody and he asked me when I was born and where I was born. And, you know, three or four days later I got a call. Someone said, you know, Yoko Ono wanted to meet me in New York. I got on a plane. And the next day I was having coffee with John Lennon.
I ain't got a credit card, a mobile phone or a computer. Call me sentimental. I think that's a whole world of trouble I ain't got no business setting foot in. And you know what? It feels good.
I like What Goes Around Comes Around for old concert tees. Oh man, I got this 'Sgt. Pepper' cartoon Beatles shirt there; it was, like, $300. I didn't even know how much it cost - I thought it was gonna be, like, $80 at most - till I got to the register and was like, 'Oh mah gawd!' Good Lord. But it's classic vintage rock, you know?
I'm 43 years old, and I know who I am, and I own my mistakes. They're my business. And when somebody who doesn't know me has an opinion, it's none of my business.
You didn't plan to write a story; it just happened. Well, it could be argued that the next thing you should do is find a hole to dig. Right? So you start digging a hole and then somebody brings a body along and puts it in. That's what a story must feel like to me. It's not that you say, "I want to write a story about a gravedigger." But you're walking along and "I don't know what I'm doing here in this story,' and - boop! a shovel. "Oh, interesting. Ok, what does one do with a shovel? Digs a hole. Why? I don't know yet. Dig the hole! Oh, look a body."
I know I have a caption that I'm going to use when somebody tells me something I've never heard before. It's very rarely a thought, a philosophy, when somebody says, 'Oh, I don't like cheese' or 'Oh, I think the government should be overthrown,' because so many people share these thoughts. But what people don't share is stories.
It's hard to know what to say about somebody like that, except there are people who look for trouble. And trouble is very easy to find when you go looking for it.
I knew Quintessentially was a success when my father, who does a lot of business in Beirut, introduced himself to somebody and they said, 'Oh, do you know Ben Elliot? I'd really like to meet him.' I remember him ringing me up, really annoyed.
You know, when I was nineteen, Grandpa took me on a roller coaster. Up, down, up, down. Oh, what a ride! I always wanted to go again. You know, it was just so interesting to me that a ride could make me so frightened, so scared, so sick, so excited, and so thrilled all together! Some didn't like it. They went on the merry-go-round. That just goes around. Nothing. I like the roller coaster. You get more out of it.
Kids will tell me 'oh I want to be like you when I grow up,' you know. I just thought 'nah, don't be like me, be like you,' because first of all they don't really know me but second of all I understand what they're trying to say but I just let them know - be like you.
Do you know when you go to a very boring dinner and you sit down and you have the chance to talk with somebody and it's so interesting that you learn so much that night that you go back and say, "Oh, finally, I met someone who inspired me"? I love that.
Oh the nerves, the nerves; the mysteries of this machine called man! Oh the little that unhinges it, poor creatures that we are!
I think my first general rule is that most of my experiences are not that interesting. It's usually other people's experiences. It's not that entirely conscious. Somebody tells me a story or, you know, repeats an anecdote that somebody else told them and I just feel like I have to write it down so I don't forget - that means for me, something made it fiction-worthy. Interesting things never happen to me, so maybe two or three times when they do, I have to use them, so I write them down.
When I first moved up to San Francisco to write Where The Wild Things Are, I had a couple moments where I talked to somebody, and they're like, "Oh, I love that book. I love this part of it," or, "This is what it means to me." And it's like, "Well, I don't know. I guess that's not what I'm making the movie about." But very early on, I don't know, we sort of let go of that fear.
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