A Quote by John Irving
If you're still wondering about details - how am I going to get these two to meet, or whatever - when you're writing, you can't pay proper attention to the sentences themselves.
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Sometimes you can't help but pay attention to what is written about you. You are trying not to because it's generally not constructive, it can be very funny, in which case it's fine to pay attention to it if you're going to laugh about it. But if it's going to get you angry then it's a pretty pointless waste of energy, so I try and be selective about what I take an interest in about myself.
We all know the principle that the polluter pays? Well one day I got to wondering why it is that the polluter seems to get away with it quite so often! Then it occurred to me that if the polluter is going to pay, somebody needs to tell him how much. The proper valuation of natural capital will enable us to say how much.
Writing itself is a dream. There are days of self doubt and deadlines and wondering how you're going to pay the bills until you write that bestseller. But it's still the best job I've ever had. I've also been able to help a lot of people and even inspire a few and that feels great.
If you directly try to write about an idea, it will never be what you imagined. But if you're imagining through the building of sentences, through the characters, and paying attention to avoid ease and comfort yet still thinking about making the sentences work, you will get a shot at some real interesting stuff.
If I'm writing about a modern-day suburb, there's going to be details of the home and furniture, and if I'm writing about a historical period, those details, those pieces of the world are going to be there as well, but they'll be simplified, because I'm cartooning it.
I don't pay much attention to how the plays relate thematically to each other. I think that's very dangerous to do, because in the theater one is self-conscious enough without planning ahead or wondering about the thematic relation from one play to the next. One hopes that one is developing, and writing interestingly, and that's where it should end, I think.
I am a control freak. I am very hands on and pay attention to details.
When I talk about how we're going to pay for education, how we're going to invest in infrastructure, how we're going to get the cost of prescription drugs down, and a lot of the other issues that people talk to me about all the time, I've made it very clear we are going where the money is. We are going to ask the wealthy and corporations to pay their fair share.
From the simplest lyric to the most complex novel and densest drama, literature is asking us to pay attention. Pay attention to the frog. Pay attention to the west wind. Pay attention to the boy on the raft, the lady in the tower, the old man on the train. In sum, pay attention to the world and all that dwells therein and thereby learn at last to pay attention to yourself and all that dwells therein.
Something's going to happen that's going to make us all pay attention at the type of sentences some people are serving and the conditions in which they are served.
Zen taught me how to pay attention, how to delve, how to question and enter, how to stay with -- or at least want to try to stay with -- whatever is going on.
I am someone who doesn't pay so much attention to how I am looking. I get so involved in what I am doing, so I overlook that.
Some people kind of get lost in what everyone else is doing and not pay attention to themselves, and I think I'm one where I pay attention to myself and can set the example for the people coming up.
I guess I have an aversion to writing about big events and heroic actions. The everyday has always seemed most important to me in writing, probably because I believe people reveal themselves in how they deal with small details.
I don't want to be wondering about how skinny I am, wondering what I'm going to eat because I don't want to gain and I want to look hot and young, always and forever.
Forget about the past. It does not exist, except in your memory. Drop it. And stop worrying about how you're going to get through tomorrow. Life is going on right here, right now - pay attention to that and all will be well.
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