A Quote by Mark Billingham
I am trying to give the best performance possible in 400 pages. I want readers to be scared; I want them to be moved. Entertainment doesn't necessarily mean something trivial, but it does mean people wanting to get to the end of a book.
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I am trying to give whatever little fans I have as much information as they want from me. I don't want to come across as arrogant or mean by not telling or giving them what them I want. These are the people who make you a star.
I've learned from my experience that desire is 80% of achievement. That if you really, really want something, if you really, really, really want to do something, that the vast majority of achieving it is wanting it. I mean, really wanting it. Not a preference, and not, "Gee, I hope this." I mean really wanting it. It is the desire that makes you do what you have to do to achieve.
I don't think of music as being a competition - what I make is exactly what I want it to be for me, and it's not better or worse than anything else. I'm just trying to be the best at what I am, or that I possibly can be. And when I've done that, I feel incredibly confident and there's nothing anyone can see to dampen that, but I don't think that because it means something to me, it has to necessarily mean something to other people.
I have a mean streak and I am capable of cruelty. This does not mean that I am necessarily mean and cruel; instead, it means that I have to be vigilant about my capacity for cruelty and the mean bone in my body.
Do you know how some people can do anything?” “What do you mean?” “I mean, you tell them to write a tune, they give you a symphony right there. You tell them to write a book, they write you a novel in a day. You tell them to move a spoon without touching it, they move it. If they want something, they make it happen. Miracles, almost.
When you're a music director, you have people constantly sending you music and trying to get - I mean, I'm sure you have the exact same thing when you do a magazine - that you have people constantly wanting to get your attention. And I think I learnt a lot from being on that end of things, when I was trying to book the tour, the first tour we did.
Our employees and competitors thought we were docile. We want to be defiantly disruptive. I don't mean necessarily by launching price wars but by being the best at the basics - having the best customer service, the best on-time performance, the best coffee - in a thoughtful, not a testosterone-laced, way.
I think we left out one of the really important elements contributing to the dynamism of society, and that is the right to privacy. I mean something more than the right to shave in private. I mean the right to join what I want to join, to do what I want to do, or not to do what I might do without giving anyone a reason, either in advance or afterwards. That does not mean that I am seeking for irresponsibility socially.
I try to weave a secret into each plot. It's the thread that holds the rest of the story fabric together. In fact, it's the reason for the story. I hint at the secret early on. Immediately I want the reader to get the feeling that something here isn't quite right. It helps maintain the suspense if a puzzling element is introduced in the first few pages of the book, but the answer isn't revealed until the final ones. Hopefully, readers want to know what the heck is really going on, and it's the desire to find out that keeps them turning pages.
...here also forgiving does not mean excusing. Many people seem to think it does. They think that if you ask them to forgive someone who has cheated or bullied them you are trying to make out that there was really no cheating or bullying. But if that were so, there would be nothing to forgive. (This doesn't mean that you must necessarily believe his next promise. It does mean that you must make every effort to kill every taste of resentment in your own heart - every wish to humiliate or hurt him or to pay him out.)
My goal in this music business is to be here as long as I'm alive. I want my music to be here. I want to be the Michael Jackson and the Prince of hip-hop. I want to be a legend. I want to change the world. I want to give them songs that mean something.
I want people to understand that tragedy and trial does not necessarily mean that you are a victim.
The people with mean things to say, say them. At the end of the day, the mean things and the good things only drive viewership. So what do you want? You want the ratings.
I don't know necessarily that I would produce under my own company right now. Producing is not something that I'm thinking about. Directing is something that I will be doing very shortly, trying to figure out what to get my hands on. And I can't imagine writing a script and wanting to direct it and not having a producing credit, because I would want to have a big chunk of power on that end, if I wrote something.
Writers don't want to appear to be stupid. I don't know - maybe people become writers so that they can prove that they're not. Of course getting a book published doesn't mean that they're not stupid. At a certain point you have to stop trying to prove something and write because you need to think about something and want to communicate, in a very broad sense.
Who decides what is and what isn't punk? I want to write songs that people hear and feel, and I want to be successful and reach a big audience. I'm not trying to be the coolest guy in the world; I'm trying to write songs that mean something to people. As you get successful, sometimes you lose one set of fans and gain another.
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