A Quote by Thomas McGuane

A lot of the writers I've known for 20 years, who used to say, 'Maybe they're right - the novel is dead!' - well, now they don't feel that it's necessarily the biggest job or most sacred calling on the planet. But it's definitely a real thing - it's always been here, always will be here, and one might just as well buckle down and get to work.
You know what I always say to people who say, "Oh, I wish I were 20 years younger"? I say, "Enjoy your age now, because in 20 years you'll be wishing you were this age." You might as well enjoy it at the present time. What I think keeps you young is always having something to look forward to and doing something new.
People will always work harder if they're getting well paid and if they're afraid of losing a job which they know will be hard to equal. As is well known, if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.
Your life is right now! It's not later! It's not in that time of retirement. It's not when the lover gets here. It's not when you've moved into the new house. It's not when you get the better job. Your life is right now. It will always be right now. You might as well decide to start enjoying your life right now, because it's not ever going to get better than right now-until it gets better right now!
There's definitely a voice and I always speak my work aloud. I have a lot of old people in my head, most of them dead now, but I always hear how they would say things, my grandparents and my neighbors.
Real writers-that is, capital W Writers-rarely make much money. Their biggest reward is the occasional reader's response.... Commentators-in-print voicing big fat opinions-you might call us small w writers-get considerably more feedback than Writers. The letters I personally find most flattering are not the very rare ones that speak well of my editorials, but the occasional reader who wants to know who writes them. I always happily assume the letter-writers is implying that the editorials are so good that I couldn't have written them myself.
There are many people writing songs. That is absolutely wonderful. Who knows, there may be some kid in diapers and he or she might succeed in capturing in a few dozen words what great writers have spent years trying to say. Just the right word in the right place with the right melody behind it and the right rhythm. It might get around the world inch by inch, and people realize that this world is in danger, that we're in danger. That's the way "This Land Is Your Land" got to be so well known.
I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you might nudge the world a little or make a poem that children will speak for you when you are dead.
I'm going to say this tonight because 20 years from now, 30 years from now, 40 years from now, I might not be able to say it, but I can say it tonight….You are now watching the greatest living rock star on the planet.
If you think 20 years out and ask what's the most important company on the planet, it is not any company you could write down today. The most important company 20 years from now has not even been founded yet and doesn't have a name.
Music has always moved me really deeply, and it's always been more about that than about the desire to rebel or annoy people (although, I've had my moments of that as well). I think it was just years of maybe moving slightly away from it but always coming back to it as the thing that I'm best at.
Well, I'm drawn to stuff that is darker. I will probably do a version of Jane Austen at some point because her books are really well known. Unfortunately they've been parodied to death, but they're so well known that I feel like I should approach it and I think I have an idea that will definitely spin it in a different way. There's melancholy and sadness around the edges. I haven't read all of her books, but it seems they often have... essentially happy endings?
People have been saying the novel is dead for as far back as I can remember. The novel will never die, but it will keep changing and evolving and taking different shapes. Storytelling, which is the basis of the novel, has always existed and always will.
"What is my job on the planet?" is one question we might do well to ask ourselves over and over again. Otherwise, we may wind up doing somebody else's job and not even know it. And what's more, that somebody else might be a figment of our own imagination, and maybe a prisoner of it as well.
If I don't make heritage visible and the strength of mother tongue important for my grandchildren, it scares me that they might say in 20 years from now, 'Well, it is rumoured that we used to be Africans long ago.' And in many urban areas, it's already happening.
A lot of producers always say "what direction are you going in?" and I don't know. I'm just doing music. Right now it's going well. It's a little slow, but it's expected because I haven't been in the studio for a minute.
Because I have always felt privileged. I have been able to do what I love, I have always been treated well, I have always been paid well so that's why. I feel that I owe something; that I need to return something. It's always been a great pleasure but nevertheless I do feel this responsibility.
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