A Quote by Maria Semple
When you need a good laugh, do you reach for a book? I don't. I expect books to move me deeply and submerge me in another reality. So when a novel makes me roar with laughter, it's always a delightful surprise.
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I Need a Good Book I need a good story. I need a good book. The kind that explodes Off the shelf. I need some good writing, Alive and exciting, To contemplate all by myself. I need a good novel, I need a good read. I probably need Two or three. I need a good tale Of love and betrayal Or perhaps an adventure at sea. I need a good saga. I need a good yarn. A momentous and mightily Or slight one. But with thousands and thousands And thousands of books, I need someone to tell me The right one. -John Lithgow
my 6 foot goddess makes me laugh the laughter of the mutilated who still need love... she has saved me from everything that is not here
To me, when one is writing sometimes about a very specific subject with very specific people, I feel like if that story doesn't cross over, it's not working. That's very beautiful to me, to be sitting in Berlin and there's an actor reading my book in German. I don't even know what's going on, except I know to feel my own rhythms in another language and say, "If this is going well, I think everyone should laugh around now." Then maybe there's laughter, and for me, it reminds me of how story can move around the world.
The process for writing a picture book is completely different from the process of writing a chapter book or novel. For one thing, most of my picture books rhyme. Also, when I write a picture book I'm always thinking about the role the pictures will play in the telling of the story. It can take me several months to write a picture book, but it takes me several years to write a novel.
Has the gift of laughter been withdrawn from me? I protest that I do still, at the age of forty-seven, laugh often and loud and long. But not, I believe, so long and loud and often as in my less smiling youth. And I am proud, nowadays, of laughing, and grateful to any one who makes me laugh. That is a bad sign. I no longer take laughter as a matter of course.
If it bothers me on the page, I don't do it. If it attracts me on the page and moves me, makes me think a bit, makes me laugh, makes me cry, I'm interested in it. If it's there on the page, it means it's there and up to me to bring it out. I have done some films along the way that have been screwed up and not as good as they read. Some films that are not that good on the page turn into good movies. So I'm fallible is what I'm saying.
Everyone's clamoring for the fourth book in the 'Fifty Shades' trilogy, which makes me laugh. Just the part of 'a fourth book in trilogy' that makes me laugh, not the clamoring for the next book.
God has created all things for good; all things for their greatest good; everything for its own good. What is the good of one is not the good of another; what makes one man happy would make another unhappy. God has determined, unless I interfere with His plan, that I should reach that which will be my greatest happiness. He looks on me individually, He calls me by my name, He knows what I can do, what I can best be, what is my greatest happiness, and He means to give it me.
Every now and then, someone will tell me that one of my books has made them laugh out loud. I never believe them because: a.) my books don't make me laugh out loud; and b.) sometimes I have said this to a writer, when really what I meant was, 'Your book made me smile appreciatively.'
Music makes me alive in a way that nothing quite does. Good art, good film, good books, good dance. Exhibitions, history. Nature makes me feel alive. Georgia in the rain - that makes me feel alive. Compassion makes me feel alive. Hard fought victories for social rights.
Oscar Wilde always makes me smile - with respect and admiration. His short stories prove that it is possible to be both sarcastic, even cynical, but deeply compassionate. Just seeing the cover of one of Wildes books in a bookshop makes me smile.
The age of the book is not over. No way... But maybe the age of some books is over. People say to me sometimes 'Steve, are you ever going to write a straight novel, a serious novel' and by that they mean a novel about college professors who are having impotence problems or something like that. And I have to say those things just don't interest me. Why? I don't know. But it took me about twenty years to get over that question, and not be kind of ashamed about what I do, of the books I write.
But, in the end, the books that surround me are the books that made me, through my reading (and misreading) of them; they fall in piles on my desk, they stack behind me on my shelves, they surprise me every time I look for one and find ten more I had forgotten about. I love their covers, their weight and their substance. And like the child I was, with the key to the world that reading gave me, it is still exciting for me to find a new book, open it at the first page and plunge in, head first, heart deep.
Laughter is spiritual health. And laughter is very unburdening. While you laugh, you can put your mind aside very easily. For a man who cannot laugh the doors of the buddha are closed. To me, laughter is one of the greatest values. No religion has ever thought about it. They have always been insisting on seriousness, and because of their insistence the whole world is psychologically sick.
Oscar Wilde always makes me smile - with respect and admiration. His short stories prove that it is possible to be both sarcastic, even cynical, but deeply compassionate. Just seeing the cover of one of Wilde's books in a bookshop makes me smile.
I'm definitely a veteran. No question. And it always makes me laugh when the younger guys tell me they remember where they were when I contested a certain match. It makes me feel old, but it's cool to hear that.
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