A Quote by Salman Rushdie
If you want to draw people into the story, you really have to write as if you're writing a novel and make these actually-existing people, including the actually-existing person with my name, into a believable person on the page. And that requires distance. That requires not being right up against the events you're talking about.
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The grand surprise has really been the fact that being an author, which to me had always implied being a private person, actually requires you to be a public person as well, and those are two separate entities to me.
I'm trying to read/edit my story as if I have no existing knowledge of the story, no investment in it, no sense of what Herculean effort went into writing page 23, no pretensions as to why the dull patch on page 4 is important for the fireworks that will happen on page 714.
Yeah, 'Mine' was inspired by a person, but it became much deeper than that. I obviously pulled lyrics... from stuff I was actually saying to this person and feeling about this person, but it was for people. I didn't want to make that song to impress that girl; I wanted to make that song to make people feel better.
I've lost track of the number of people who want to be writers but never actually write anything. Talking about writing, dreaming about writing, can be very fun, but it won't get a book written. You've got to write.
I've lost track of the number of people who want to be writers but never actually write anything. Talking about writing, dreaming about writing, can be very fun, but it won't get a book written. You've got to write
Am I a good person? Deep down, do I even really want to be a good person, or do I only want to seem like a good person so that people (including myself) will approve of me? Is there a difference? How do I ever actually know whether I'm bullshitting myself, morally speaking?
The Demon character is something I draw on occasion. It's something that requires a lot of focus to tap into and really requires the right situation for me to sort of draw on that darker side of my personality.
An actually existing fly is more important than a possibly existing angel.
When I was a kid, I'd go to the African-American section in the bookstore, and I'd try and find African-American people I hadn't read before. So in that sense the category was useful to me. But it's not useful to me as I write. I don't sit down to write an African-American zombie story or an African-American story about elevators. I'm writing a story about elevators which happens to talk about race in different ways. Or I'm writing a zombie novel which doesn't have that much to do with being black in America. That novel is really about survival.
The reason why it is so difficult for existing firms to capitalize on disruptive innovations is that their processes and their business model that make them good at the existing business actually make them bad at competing for the disruption.
I think anything that requires real global breakthroughs requires a degree of intensity and sustained effort that cannot be done part time, so it's something you have to do around the clock, and that doesn't compute with our existing educational system.
The odds against life in the universe are simply astonishing. Yet here we are, not only existing, but talking about existing. What can account for it? Can every one of those many parameters have been perfect by accident? At what point is it fair to admit that science suggests that we cannot be the result of random forces?
I think a lot of people want people who actually have qualities they don't find attractive as a way of being able to change them. It's fascinating, because people think if they can change the other person, they can change themselves. It's a complex phenomenon. It's a fantasy that's actually about being able to come to terms with ourselves.
I think we need to make documentaries about fantasy and storytelling. I think I just started to scratch the surface of a method that allows us to do that. We want to be sucked into the events, suspend our disbelief and imagine that this is a fiction, but actually putting onscreen the gap between who the people are and who they want to be and therefore opening the question about why they want to be this person.
When I'm writing comics, I'm also visualizing how the story will look on the page - not even always art-wise, but panel-wise, like how a moment will be enhanced dramatically by simply turning a page and getting a reveal. It requires thinking about story in a way I never had to consider when I was writing prose.
What I see is trying to make sure that everybody thinks you have more than what you actually have. What’s the point if you actually don’t have it? If you don’t have it, then you don’t have it. Have what you have. Enjoy that . . . The craft is everything. Don’t be afraid of not being the wealthiest person in the room. Be the smartest person in the room. Be the slickest person in the room. Be the most creative person in the room. Be the most entertaining person in the room. Just be in the room.
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