A Quote by Simon Winchester

I do as much bookish research as I can but when I sit down to write, often I think, 'Wait, I was there.' That is one of the great advantages of having wandered around the world and lived in so many places and met such fascinating people.
In a short amount of time, I've lived so much, had so many experiences and met so many different types of people and even lived in so many countries. If I had been in school, I'd be learning about the world from books.
I've lived a lot since I was 16, so I've got more things to write about. I've started playing around the world and met some great people along the way who've taught me lots of things.
I can sit in my room and write a song that I think might be a hit. I can sort of make myself do that, and then I'll play it to a friend, and they'll say, 'Oh, that's nice.' But when something happens to me, and I sit down and write a song to get rid of my emotions, they'll turn around and say, 'Wow, that's great.'
One of the advantages of being an older woman in films,is that you don't care as much about so many things. There are women in history throughout the world that need to be portrayed. Women don't stop being interesting at 20, they get more interesting and more fascinating and people are going to have to write about them. We're undeniable.
Unlike many other places, Hilo is more fascinating on closer acquaintance - so fascinating that it is hard to write about it in plain prose.
I think that anyone really can write songs, it just takes having an idea and a feeling and chasing it, and you can learn more about it. I think that's why I go to so many sessions. It is a craft that you can learn from other people. I find it to be the most fascinating thing. So I write a lot, yeah!
Being around some of the bright lights of the technology world and having them expect great things helps you sit down and do it seriously.
I never sit down to write. When I'm moved, I do it. I just wait for it to come. You just hear it. I can't really describe writing. It's in my head. I don't think about the styles. I write whatever comes out and I use whatever kind of instrumentation works for those songs...A lot of people don't listen to the lyrics, really. A lot of people pretty much only listen to the chorus.
One of the advantages of having lived a long time is that you can often remember when you had it worse. I am grateful to have lived long enough to have known some of the blessings of adversity.
I guess what I'm looking for here is empathy. So you [Nicholas Kristof] have traveled all around the world, famously to the worse places of the world. Darfur. Mogadishu, Ouagadougou. Probably those places much more than Modesto or Lewiston.I never read a column by you that suggest the people in those places, who support dictators oftentimes, are racists or bad people. You would never write that about a poor person in the third world but you are implying that about your fellow Americans.
The truth is, there are so many terrific places in New York because it's the greatest city in the world, and there are so many fascinating places to see that, frankly, it's humbling.
In such a fast-paced world, gathering people around a table to share a meal allows everything to slow down. I would ask people to sit at least once a week around a table and just enjoy each other's company. Give them the time to talk, laugh, and fill their bellies. It seems like a small thing, but it can bring so much joy to so many people.
I think we overrate experience and what we've been through in terms of our success at doing the work we do. There are many people who get beat up, who suffer, who are victimized, and then they sit down to write and they write crap.
When you sit down and write a song, you kind of have the idea for the song, and you sit there at the piano and you kinda just write it. And then of course later there's some dinking around with it and changing some stuff. But there's this thing that happens when the song first comes out, that sort of magic when it first comes out of the ether, and you can't even really explain where it comes from. That happens so much with music, and people understand that with music. But I really think that a lot of movie and TV should be the same way.
I haven't really had any experiences, as far as having paparazzi sit outside of my house or following me around on the street. But, I actually don't really go to places where they do that, unless they knew where I lived or what kind of car I drive.
When you've had a chance to live some experiences then you can really write, and not having lived that much when I was young I didn't have much to write about. Now having seen life, the songs seem to come easier.
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