A Quote by Stewart O'Nan

I like the idea of being a working writer, not of saying that it's going to take me 30 years to write my magnum opus. — © Stewart O'Nan
I like the idea of being a working writer, not of saying that it's going to take me 30 years to write my magnum opus.
I won't write a book. I haven't got a magnum opus in me.
When you decide 'to be a writer,' you don't have the faintest idea of what the work is like. When you begin, you write spontaneously out of your limited experience of both the unwritten world and the written world. You're full of naïve exuberance. 'I am a writer!' Rather like the excitement of 'I have a lover!' But working at it nearly every day for fifty years ? whether it is being the writer or being the lover ? turns out to be an extremely taxing job and hardly the pleasantest of human activities.
I took the part in 'Mr. Holland's Opus' because no one had ever asked me to play 'a life' before. I get to age through 30 years. The idea really challenged me.
Since 'Mononoke' has such a dramatic story, I played up the drama, emphasizing the power of a magnum opus.
We have things to say about Congress and all of that. I think we may have our magnum opus coming yet. It's a piece called "Leonard" that I'm very excited about, and I think we're going to see a side of Chris Pine that people haven't really seen yet. That's all I'm going to say, but I'm proud of it.
When people asked me what I was going to do when I grow up, I always said, 'I'm going to be a writer. I'm going to write screenplays. I'm going to write books. I'm going to write plays. That's what I'm going to do.'
There's no such thing as post-feminism. It's like saying post-democracy, excuse me, what does that mean? We're nowhere near equality, so the very idea of post-feminism is ridiculous. The same people who 30-40 years ago said the women's movement is not necessary, 'it's going against nature, my wife is not interested' [are] the same people now saying 'well it used to be necessary but not anymore.' The very invention of the word post-feminism is the current form of resistance.
I don't buy into the idea that an Irish writer should write about Ireland, or a gay writer should write about being gay. But when I found the right story, I saw it as an opportunity to write about being a teenager and being gay. Most people, whether you're gay or straight or whatever, have experienced that relationship where one person is much more interested than the other.
I wasn't entitled to dream so big. The idea of me being a writer wasn't even possible in my mind. Even when I began to write and first published, I couldn't call myself a writer.
I'm a situational writer. You give me a situation, like a writer gets in a car crash, breaks his leg, is kidnapped by his number-one fan, and is kept in a cabin and forced to write a book - everything else springs from there. You really don't have to work once you've had the idea. All you have to do is kind of take dictation from something inside.
We don't have great answers to what jobs will look like in 10, 20, 30 years. And I think it's right for people to have some anxiety in a world where driverless cars are going to take over. Like, how are you going - it's gotten really, how are you going to have a job in 10 years, and how are your kids going to have a job in 10 years, if you haven't gone to college or had a lot of hand-ups in the system, basically.
Often, you have to fail as a writer before you write that bestselling novel or ground-breaking memoir. If you're failing as a writer - which it definitely feels like when you're struggling to write regularly or can't seem to earn a living as a freelance writer - maybe you need to take a long-term perspective.
My mic is a Magnum. See me and this chick, we go back like Cro-Magnon. Man...we did it in the back of your Magnum; I said, 'Put them Lifestyles back, give me the Magnums.'
As for writing novels - it's what I've done for 30 some-odd years. I can't suddenly say I'm going to take up golf. I need something in my life. As long as I can write a coherent sentence, I'll keep at it.
I think a lot of writers spend years just getting up the courage to write because it seems like such a fantasy of a profession. My dad saved me all that time by making me think, 'Oh, anyone can be a writer. It's like being a firefighter or a lawyer.'
After we finished touring 'Ignore The Ignorant' we had this perfect idea that we were going to take a couple of years off, that was the plan. Because we thought we were definitely going to take time off, I was going to go back to college, that was what I was going to do. Because the whole idea of it was that I have spent ten years in this band and not even realised that that amount of time has passed.
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