A Quote by Salman Rushdie
I used to write a monthly column for the 'New York Times' syndicate. But I stopped because I found it really hard to have one extreme opinion a month. I don't know how these columnists have two or three ideas a week; I was having difficulty having 12 things to say a year.
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If you send out one coupon with a deadline of a week and another that must be used within the next month, you end up having more redemptions with the one week deadline. It's really amazing. With the month deadline you have four times as much time, but people tend to say they'll use it in a few weeks' time and then they don't do it.
I say to people, 'Do you have any idea how hard it is to do that, to write 7,000 words in 10 hours or 12 hours for the front page of the 'New York Times' and to know that they trust you so much that that it's going to lead the paper?' It's hard. I mean, it's a feat.
One of the things, and the most exciting, actually definitely the most exciting thing is, having children. You know, I didn't have children before. I had been married only a year before my space station mission, so having three-year-olds is a whole new experience and that's the new adventure. It may sound funny because people have kids every day, but having your own kids, having my own kids, was as fundamentally, or maybe even more fundamentally life changing then even flying in space.
Writing well isn't just a question of winsome expression, but of having found something big and true to say and having found the right words to say it in, of having seen something large and having found the right words to say it small, small enough to enter an individual mind so that the strong ideas of what the words are saying sound like sweet reason.
We have the Bible in our hands; but how little we know of its teaching! And how little are we governed by it! We go on, from week to week, year to year, with things which have no foundation whatever in its pages- yea, with things utterly opposed to its teaching; and, all the while, we boast of having the Scriptures, just like the Jews of old, who made their boast of having the oracles of God, while those very oracles condemned themselves and their ways, and left them without a single plea.
I used to write about experiences that a 20-year-old would write about - going out with your friends, having a drink. You know, things were a little bit sexier in a different way. Now, you know, I'm a mom, and I want to filter some of the things that I say.
In Beijing, the joke among hacks is that, after the drive in from the airport, you are ready to write a column; after a month, you feel the stirrings of an idea-book; but after a year, you struggle to write anything at all, because you've finally discovered just how much you don't know.
When I was at McGill medical school, there was a writer, Ted Rosenthal, who used to write for the New York Times - tragically he died of leukemia at a very young age. He talked about how we can have an opportunity to live a lifetime in a moment, in a day, in a month, in a year - when you're confronted with the finite reality of your own existence, all these moments become lifetimes.
Writing a column, a weekly column for the New York Times, is really tough, and I wasn't prepared for the demands that that involved.
At times those skills were really hard to do because not only was I having to contend with the camera, but I was having to learn these new skills and the ball was always kind of doing what you didn't want it to do. So it got a little bit frustrating at times but we got there.
I write in the mornings, two or three hours every day, and then at least four times a week I play in a duplicate game at a bridge club. I try to go to tournaments three, four, or five times a year.
I did always want to write. And then, when I left New York, where I was working very steadily in the theater - I had done three Broadway shows in a row and was a bit burnt out - I moved out to L.A. and I was not working very much. I came in cold and I'd work for a week, but then I'd have a month or two off. I thought, "I'm going to go crazy unless I actually do write." Like a lot of things in life, it was a situation that came about by circumstances.
I get guilty when I spend money on silly things like clothes and stuff. Having experienced a completely different extreme of wealth, and I don't mean me being poor or rich, I mean knowing that 40 quid that gets spent on a pair of shoes could go a long way for a family in Georgia for a week or even a month, having experienced that, you're a bit more [guilty].
I just wanted to have fun for myself - I felt I had a lot to say, and I realized that I missed having a magazine as a place to express my ideas. The Times column is a place for me to unload those perceptions.
I just wanted to have fun for myself - I felt I had a lot to say, and I realized that I missed having a magazine as a place to express my ideas. The Times column is a place for me to unload those perceptions
If you've been around as long as I have, watching the literary scene, then you know that who's in and who's out changes by the year. It's really a very fluid situation that requires that the person who is having the good luck now isn't having it a year or two from now.
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