A Quote by Tim O'Brien
If I see a phrase that strikes me as ugly, I'll delete it. Or, if I find a way to say something a bit more freshly than it was expressed originally, I'll do it. Ultimately, you want to try to leave behind the best possible paragraph or sentence.
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When I write for 'n+1,' I begin by doing a lot of reading, to try to convince myself I'm not stupid. Then I scribble down a paragraph here, a paragraph there, when a notion strikes. Then I see if I can arrange those notions in a way that yields an argument.
What I have in advance are people I want to write about and a problem or problems that I see those people encountering and that I want to explore - it all proceeds sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, and scene by scene.
I find I can write for two lines, and then I have nothing else to say. For me, the only way to find something comes through the sentence level and sticking with the sentences that give a subtle feeling that there's something more to say.
I want an actor to try to give me what I ask in the best and most exact way possible. He mustn't try to find out more, because then there's the danger that he'll become his own director.
If you find someone attractive, you try to make them find you attractive. That is called seduction. And seduction is a bit ugly. You could say it's a bit ugly to use your charisma.
The rhythmical unit of the syllable is at the back of all of it - the word, the phrase, the sentence, the syntax, the paragraph, and the way the heart moves when you read it.
To me, 'Garden of Delete' is a way of describing the idea that good things can bloom out of a negative situation. All the traumatic experiences I had during puberty, ugly memories and ugly thoughts in general can yield something good, like a record or whatever.
I have learned that in any significant or continuing relationship, feelings which are persistent had best be expressed. If they are expressed as feelings owned by me, the result may be temporarily upsetting but ultimately far more rewarding than any attempt to deny or conceal them.
I feel like karma is something that's real. I try and be the best possible person I can be, but not only that I try to help as many people as possible and influence others in a positive manner. And that's all stuff brought on by MMA because I want to be successful so want to be the best possible person.
I just wanted to speak to you about something from the Internal Revenue Code. It is the last sentence of section 509A of the code and it reads: 'For purposes of paragraph 3, an organization described in paragraph 2 shall be deemed to include an organization described in section 501C-4, 5, or 6, which would be described in paragraph 2 if it were an organization described in section 501C-3.' And that's just one sentence out of those fifty-seven feet of books.
Opportunities may come along for you to convert something -something that exists into something that didn't yet. That might be the beginning of it. Sometimes you just want to do things your way, want to see for yourself what lies behind the misty curtain. It's not like you see songs approaching and invite them in. It's not that easy. You want to write songs that are bigger than life. You want to say something about strange things that have happened to you, strange things you have seen. You have to know and understand something and then go past the vernacular.
I've always been more than a little mystified by poets who seem to think talking to people as directly as possible is a bad thing. I mean, I don't want to set up a straw man here: I understand that for many poets - and for me, at times - writing truly means writing in a way that is difficult, simply because the poem is trying to grasp for something elusive. So the difficulty of the poem is just unavoidable, and not in any way artificially imposed. So "as possible" is the key part of the phrase above, I suppose.
I'm looking for things where, like with 'Ten,' I don't look like me, and I'm playing something a bit different. I'm just trying to flex a different muscle and see if it works. I've saved the world and killed monsters and done all that. Now I want to try something a bit different and a bit more challenging.
Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter. I won't have any money to leave behind. I won't have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind. And that's all I want to say.
What is easy to read has been difficult to write. The labour of writing and rewriting, correcting and recorrecting, is the due exacted by every good book from its author, even if he knows from the beginning exactly what he wants to say. A limpid style is invariably the result of hard labour, and the easily flowing connection of sentence with sentence and paragraph with paragraph has always been won by the sweat of the brow.
Find something that thrills you, and when you finish reading it for enjoyment, read it again line by line, paragraph by paragraph to see what you liked about it.
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