A Quote by Oscar Hijuelos
I grew up with the idealistic notion that writing and literature were noble causes. I had no inkling, no sense of what I would eventually encounter in terms of people who weren't being sincere. I'm not saying that it happens always or a lot, but it happens enough that sometimes it makes me feel a little queasy.
Related Quotes
Being a writer is part of a noble tradition, as is being a musician – the last egalitarian and open associations. No matter what happens in terms of fame and fortune, dedication to writing is a marching-step forward from where you were before, when you didn’t care about reaching out to the world, when you weren’t hoping to contribute, when you were just standing there doing some job into which you had fallen.
The artwork had very little to do with the thought process, and the writing too, for that matter. What happens, happens, and it happens outside the brain.
Bad stuff happens.
Sometimes it makes no sense at all. Sometimes its unfair.
Sometimes, it just plain sucks.
Bad stuff happens sometimes.
Always remember that, but remember that you have to move on somehow. You just pick your head up and stare at something beautiful like the sky, or the ocean, and you move the hell on.
I feel like I've always been a weirdo. I always grew up with the sense of being a total outsider. I grew up so alienated from other people, and it never went away. When I'm around "normal" people I behave around them as if they are crazy, which makes me seem crazy.
I do feel that both visual artists and writers look out at the world in a similar way, and wonder at what they see. They want to record the visual world in their own, distinctive ways. We could call it "attention to detail," which also makes a good carpenter, for instance. To be what Emerson called the "transparent eyeball" (which is a phrase that makes me a little queasy) is a noble quest, I feel. It's a quest for honesty, and as Frost put it, a momentary stay against confusion. If I had more talent and courage, I would still love to be a painter.
When I was 17, I grew from being something like 5'2'' to 6 foot - I grew a lot - and I don't remember growing... I feel like the same thing is true of writing. You're waiting for Santa Claus to come down the chimney, but you just fall asleep at some point, and then the magic happens.
When something bad happens to me, I think I'm able to deal with it in a pretty good way. That makes me lucky. Some people fall apart at the first little thing that happens.
I've had to learn kind of sense when the questions would be coming and be ready to handle them. There's a lot of education and reiteration that happens on these online channels and sometimes it's tempting to just say, "Well, just go and read the documentation," but you know, people appreciate being led along and taught and mentored.
When I was little I had this notion of being a marine biologist. I grew up by the ocean so I was always in the water but realistically, I don't think I would make the best marine biologist.
Usually what happens is somebody grabs me and they always pull me off to the side. Nobody ever does it publically. They say, "I didn't want to be here." Or, "I don't usually like people like you." Or, "I didn't believe the things you actually talked about would work. I'm here to tell you that you converted me." That happens a lot.
My family lives in Miami, and I always envision myself, if something happens, it'd be like 'The Day After Tomorrow' where I walk across country to find my family. That would be the kind of person I would be. I feel like I wouldn't be as scared. If it happens, it happens. You face it.
With fiction, you can talk about plot, character and narrative, whereas a poem brings home the fact that everything that happens in a work of literature happens in terms of language. And this is daunting stuff to deal with.
I can always look up at the cosmos and marvel, no matter what happens. And when I look up at it, I feel as though my problems are small. I don't know why, but it always makes me feel better.
Every once in a while, someone comes up to me and says, "Excuse me, are you Tim Daly?" And I say yes and they say "I have to tell you, I am such a huge fan of yours, and my favorite work of yours is the voice of Superman." I'm always sort of surprised when that happens - I used to think that it was all about the kids watching those animated shows, and who did the voices didn't really enter their consciousness. But there are people that it means a lot to and I'm always a little bit taken aback by that. And I'm thrilled when that happens.
Normal people terrify me, because they haven't had enough problems in their life to know how to handle problems when they come up. Something little happens and they snap. But being from a dysfunctional family means nothing rattles me. Hey once you've driven a drunken father to moms' parole hearing, what else is there?
I guess I just always want to surprise myself and say something that I'm not really quite sure where it came from, and it sort of makes sense and has a kind of profundity to it. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't.
Related Authors
Charles Bukowski Quotes
American
Novelist
Charles Dickens Quotes
English
Novelist
Chuck Palahniuk Quotes
American
Novelist
Ernest Hemingway Quotes
American
Novelist
George Eliot Quotes
British
Novelist
George Orwell Quotes
British
Novelist
George R. R. Martin Quotes
American
Novelist
Jane Austen Quotes
British
Novelist
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
German
Novelist
Margaret Atwood Quotes
Canadian
Novelist
Nicholas Sparks Quotes
American
Novelist
Paulo Coelho Quotes
Brazilian
Novelist
Sarah Dessen Quotes
American
Novelist
Stephenie Meyer Quotes
American
Novelist
Veronica Roth Quotes
American
Novelist
Victor Hugo Quotes
French
Novelist