A Quote by Paul Madonna

What I am most proud of with the book On to the Next Dream is how I turned an intensely emotional experience into art. Anyone can run up to a rooftop, tear off their clothes, and scream about how screwed up the world is. But for the people down below, all they see is a person losing their mind. I wanted to make something that channeled that emotion in a way that elicited an empathetic response from the reader. So that after you read this book, you would want to run up to the rooftop and scream about how screwed up the world is.
People are screwed up in this world. I'd rather be with someone screwed up and open about it than somebody perfect and ready to explode.
I think Roland read 'Primal Scream' first and then gave it to me. This was, I think, even prior to 'The Graduate' days. We both got heavily into and it offered a lot of questions about how screwed up our home life was.
I really don't mind dying because I figure I haven't wasted this life. Up until my first book was published I had all this potential, people would say, and I screwed up. After it, I could say: No, I didn't screw up.
I read John Irving's novel 'The World According To Garp' when I was about 14 or 15. It was the first grown-up book that I had read. It is the story of a young man who grows up to be a novelist. I finished it, and I wanted to write a book that made the reader feel the way I felt at the end of that, which was sort of both bereft and elated.
I would like my book to give people insight to the war before and after, but I don't think anyone could read my book and suddenly make up her mind about the war. I want to write for everybody.
I would say more power to women who scream from the rooftop about something wrong done to them, whether it is after 10 years or 20 or 50... It doesn't make a difference.
We're all screwed up. And the way Christians mess things up is we act like we've got it going on. And if we would just stay in that place of, 'Hey, we're all screwed up and but for the grace of God, none of us have a shot here.' We need to have a sense of humor about it; that's kind of the way I've always faced my comedy.
Up until my first book was published, I had all this potential, people would say, and I screwed up. After it, I could say: 'No, I didn't screw up.'
A lot of people are singing about how screwed up the world is, and I don't think that everybody wants to hear about that all the time.
And then I screwed up and the Colonel screwed up and Takumi screwed up and she slipped through our fingers.
Al Gore announced he is finishing up a new book about global warming and the environment. Yeah, the first chapter talks about how you shouldn't chop down trees to make a book that no one will read.
The book, as it stands, seems to me to be one of the most frightful muddles I have ever read, with scarcely a sound proposition in it beginning with page 45 [Hayek provided historical background up to page 45; after that came his theoretical model], and yet it remains a book of some interest, which is likely to leave its mark on the mind of the reader. It is an extraordinary example of how, starting with a mistake, a remorseless logician can end up in bedlam.
Some people do want to stand on the rooftop and scream out their story. Others are cowering in the corner, or sitting with a blank face in class, and not knowing how to tell their story.
I am very bad at remembering the books I've read and so recently I had a wonderful experience. I decided I wanted to teach Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. I hadn't read it in twenty-five years. I was surprised to find how much I drew from that book. Stole from that book, learned from that book about writing. I had forgotten and there it was. Morrison has called that text faulted. I cannot see how.
It's no surprise that things are so screwed up: everyone that knows how to run a government is either driving taxicabs or cutting hair.
I don't know how the editors are going to take it or how it may be received. But to some extent I'm hoping that with the next book, when people pick it up and read it, it will scare the pants off of them.
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