A Quote by John Lanchester

I think the Internet was invented specifically to stop people finishing their books. And it does quite a good job. I don't have blocking software, though I could easily imagine needing it. I just don't do that stuff until I've got the words done for the day.
Think of an economy where people could be an artist or a photographer or, eh, a writer without worrying about keeping their day job in order to have health insurance, or that people could start a business and be entrepreneurial and take risk but not be job-locked because a child has asthma or someone in the family is bipolar. You name it. Any condition is job-blocking.
Writing is a job, a craft, and you learn it by trying to write every day and by facing the page with humility and gall. And you have to love to read books, all kinds of books, good books. You are not looking for anything in particular; you are just letting stuff seep in.
Everyone should be concerned about Internet anarchy in which anybody can pretend to be anybody else, unless something is done to stop it. If hoaxes like this go unchecked, who can believe anything they see on the Internet? What good would the Internet be then? If the people who control Internet web sites do not do anything, is that not an open invitation for government to step in? And does anybody want politicians to control what can go on the Internet?
I didn't even enter a bookshop until I was 14 because I couldn't afford books until I got my first Saturday job, but by the time I was six or seven, I spent practically every Saturday down my local library reading as much as I could and getting out as many books as I could.
I think screenwriter Steve Kloves does such a difficult job. And he does a bloody brilliant job, too. Transferring these Harry Potter books into films and making them coherent is one thing. But making them entertaining, as well, is quite another... He does a tremendous job, and he gets a lot of stick. And it's really unfair sometimes, and I challenge anyone else to do the job he does.
I could, I think, quite easily have gone to Oxford. I got four good A levels, but my father's income was such that I wouldn't have got a grant, and he wouldn't let me go to university, and that was the end of it.
Messy stuff irritates me. I don't like messiness. If you leave something around my house, I'll tell you to move it back, clean it up, throw it in the trash - don't matter, just get rid of it. I need stuff neat, organized. And once I start cleaning stuff, I don't stop until it's done. Otherwise I'm irritated all day.
When I go on holiday and people ask me what I do, I tell them I do some internet stuff and I've done a couple of books and I hope they just leave it at that.
I just invent, then wait until man comes around to needing what I've invented.
In my head, I felt if I'd stayed at City and got a chance, I could have done a good job. It was made clear that wasn't going to happen, though.
I've done that quite often, but I've got to be quite honest... as much as you would want to only do one at a time, sometimes projects overlap and there's nothing you can do. Sometimes you to have begin writing a new project just as you're finishing off another.
I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially... They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck. It's a series of tubes.
So that's why you've got to try, you got to breath and have some fun. Though I'm not paid, I play this game, and I won't stop until I'm done. But what I really want to know is - Are you gonna go my way?
Write every day. Don't kill yourself. I think a lot of people think, 'I have to write a chapter a day' and they can't. They fall behind and stop doing it. But if you just write even one hundred words a day, it's not that much. By the end of a month, you'll have three thousand words, which is one chapter.
I don’t know if I’d do an action movie because I don’t know if I could keep a straight face honestly, I just think it’s so silly. Like I love watching them but I can’t imagine me doing one. Actually, you know what I’ve done, just for fun because I didn’t think there was any way that I could be in a superhero movie, so I’ve done a scene in the new “Thor” movie, just for that. I just do like one scene, which was quite fun.
Max [Landis] writes in quite a heightened way, specifically for Dirk. There's a rhythm and a specific speed to it, and it was very easy to learn because it was so well-written. It just rolled off the tongue. There aren't many auditions that I go for, where I feel like I could actually do the part. But with this one, even though I was not quite sure how to pin Dirk down, I thought I could do it.
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