A Quote by Simon Van Booy

I was living in a large apartment with no furniture, just a typewriter, and because I had nothing else to do with my time, it made me take my writing seriously. — © Simon Van Booy
I was living in a large apartment with no furniture, just a typewriter, and because I had nothing else to do with my time, it made me take my writing seriously.
And last, my mom. I don’t think you know what you did. You had my brother when you were 18 years old. Three years later, I came out. The odds were stacked against us. Single parent with two boys by the time you were 21 years old. Everybody told us we weren’t supposed to be here. We went from apartment to apartment by ourselves. One of the best memories I had was when we moved into our first apartment, no bed, no furniture and we just sat in the living room and just hugged each other. We thought we made it.
For my first apartment, when I was first married, I went to the lumberyard and bought stuff and made couches. My then-wife made cushions. I was really very interested in furniture. I was in school for architecture, but I had to live, and making furniture was different from designing buildings, which I couldn't do for myself.
I edit as I go. Especially when I go to commit it to paper. I prefer a typewriter even to a computer. I don't like it. There's no noise on the computer. I like a typewriter because I am such a slow typist. I edit as I am committing it to paper. I like to see the words before me and I go, "Yeah, that's it." They appear before me and they fit. I don't usually take large parts out. If I get stuck early in a song, I take it as a sign that I might be writing the chorus and don't know it. Sometimes,you gotta step back a little bit and take a look at what you're doing.
The first time I took a fiction writing class was sophomore year. And I just found myself taking that extremely seriously, in a way that I didn't take anything else seriously. So I guess that was the start of it.
When 'Mortal Kombat' came out, I was living in an apartment in the Venice Canals in L.A. I didn't get paid a huge amount of money, so I had a nice apartment, but I couldn't afford to have it furnished. It was kind of like Robert De Niro's apartment in 'Heat': It looked like I was ready to walk away from it in ten seconds, because there was nothing.
I had a TV set and a typewriter and that made me think a computer should be laid out like a typewriter with a video screen.
My friend advised me to go into studying art, which at first shocked me because art was so easy. It was just something I did, like breathing or brushing my teeth. It couldn't be a job. I had a much more difficult time writing plays, making myself sit at that typewriter and finish those things.
One of the things about me is that I actually had marginally middle-class living from writing. For years and years, I actually wrote so much through the '70s and '80s that I made a living. And very rarely have I had to take another job. And now it's impossible for anybody coming up to make such a living. They've pissed in the temple, you know?
Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.
I keep telling everyone that I want to start a revolution but no one is taking me seriously. If I had black skin and an afro, would you take me seriously? If I was an Arab waving a hand grenade, would you take me seriously?
I wasn't as used to the new dumb questions, so when men I had once thought of as wise daddies now asked me 'How do you write?' I did not try and spill red wine in their suede pants. I would just smile and say, 'On a typewriter in the mornings when there's nothing else to do.'
To come to know that nothing is good, nothing is bad, is a turning point; it is a conversion. You start looking in; the outside reality loses meaning. The social reality is a fiction, a beautiful drama; you can participate in it, but then you don’t take it seriously. It is just a role to be played; play it as beautifully, as efficiently, as possible. But don’t take it seriously, it has nothing of the ultimate in it.
When I started writing seriously, I made the major discovery of my life - that I am right and everybody else is wrong if they disagree with me. What a great thing to learn: Don't listen to anyone else, and always go your own way.
I honestly think if I had made a ton of money as an actor, I wouldn't have done anything else. (Hah!) Then I turned to writing plays. If that paid me well, I don't know if I would have turned to TV. Or coaching. I've now devised a combination of things partly because I'm having fun, and partly because I'm piecing together a way to make a living.
I could hear hopefulness in her voice, but also doubt. She was waiting for me to admit the obvious: I'd forgotten. I was toast. I was boyfriend roadkill. Just because I forgot, you shouldn't take that as a sign I didn't care about Annabeth. Seriously, the last month with her had been awesome. I was the luckiest demigod ever. But a special dinner... when had I mentioned that? Maybe I'd said it after Annabeth kissed me, which had sort of sent me into a fog. Maybe a Greek gos had disguised himself as me as and made her that promise as a prank. Or maybe I was just a rotten boyfriend.
To me the early childhood story is an ecumenical one. You take poverty seriously. You take seriously maternal depression. You take seriously children under stress and you take seriously the effects of extended hours participation in poor quality care. Those are the facts I begin with.
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