I always felt better co-writing something - always co-writing. Because if I was the lead of it and it failed, then it failed on my own accord. I would say, "Well, I liked it or I screwed up. I take the hit on this one."
My writing model is my mother, who is a writer as well. She always valued clarity and simplicity above all else. If someone doesn't understand what you're writing, then everything else you do is superfluous. Irrelevant. If any thoughtful, curious reader finds what I do impenetrable, I've failed.
I failed eating, failed drinking, failed not cutting myself into shreds. Failed friendship. Failed sisterhood and daughterhood. Failed mirrors and scales and phone calls. Good thing I'm stable.
I'd hit thirty, I'd sort of failed as a musician, I'd failed as an artist I felt at the time.
I failed at the biggest things there are in life. I failed in my health, I failed in my marriage, I failed in everything, and I've picked myself up and gone on.
Oh, I don't think religion has failed. It's man who has failed. Christ hasn't failed. The Gospel hasn't failed. The teachings of God have not failed.
The reason socialism has failed around the world every time it's been tried is because people in socialist countries have looked at the United States and have said if they can have it that good, we can. It's a failed, flawed ideology, but if you ask socialists why it's always failed, it's because the United States has stood in the way.
The quality of writing attracts me to films, also who the other actors are, who the director is, where it's being shot. Any or all of those things. But if the writing is really appalling, then the money had better be really good. Sometimes you say yes to something you wouldn't always do because you need the money.
The hard part of writing at all is sitting your ass down in a chair and writing it. There's always something better to do, like I've got an interview, sharpening the pencils, trimming the roses. There's always something better to do. Going to a writer's club?
I've always felt that one of the mistakes people make is that they try to do something that is just slightly beyond their skill set, and then feel they've failed.
Everyone who has ever written will have discovered that writing always awakens something which, though it lay within us, we failed clearly to recognize before.
There's something to writing a hook and something to writing a memorable melody. That's what I liked about musicals. Then I realized I could write my own songs, and I didn't have to sing other people's.
In the '70s, the newspaper guild managed to get people paid what they were worth, but the reporters suddenly became middle class. It's much more respectable, more uptight, and everyone speaks in guarded tones. And the writing isn't as good. We always had guys who were failed poets and failed novelists who did it to eat.
The fact is, Bush's war policy has failed. It's failed! Who better to say so than Jack Murtha?
Armenag Saroyan was the failed poet, the failed Presbyterian preacher, the failed American, the failed theological student.
A startup is literally just a series of unfortunate events where you failed, failed, failed, and failed until you succeed.
I'm a failed poet. Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry ?rst, ?nds he can't, and then tries the short story, which is the most demanding form after poetry. And, failing at that, only then does he take up novel writing.