“In terms of my Indianness, I try not to rely on it nor deny it. When it comes up organically in my writing, we can address it. About five years ago, we wrote this episode of 'The Office,' called 'Diwali,' which seemed like an organic way of using it.” WayWritingTryingYearsTermFiveOfficeYears AgoCome UpDenyRelyFive YearsAddressesEpisodes Author:Mindy Kaling
“It used to be that you had to make female TV characters perfect so no one would be offended by your 'portrayal' of women. Even when I started out on 'The Office' eight years ago, we could write our male characters funny and flawed, but not the women. And now, thankfully, it's completely different.” WritingYearsDifferentCharacterWould BeFunnyUsedPerfectTvsOfficeFemaleYears AgoMalesEightUsed To BeOffendedFlawedPortrayal Author:Mindy Kaling
“I really enjoyed reading the writings of Fredrick Buechner, I havent read anything by him in probably a decade but about 20 years ago I read four or five books of his and it helped me.” WritingYearsBookReadingFiveFourYears AgoDecadesEnjoyed Author:Max Lucado
“Iran should write us yet another letter saying thank you very much, because Iran, as I said many years ago, Iran is taking over Iraq, something they've wanted to do forever, but we Americans have made it so easy for them.” ShouldWritingYearsMadeSaidWantedEasyForeverYears AgoLettersIraqMade ItIranSaying Thank You Author:Donald Trump
“Sometimes things in life take a few years to digest, and they find their way into the work later on. Sometimes I'm writing about things from eight years ago-they just took a long time to distill and come out in the appropriate way.” WayWritingYearsLongSometimesLong TimeYears AgoEightAppropriateThings In Life Author:Beck
“The very paradigm of revolution, of right versus wrong, good versus bad, is a relic with no bearing on the present. Yet artists, exhibitions, and curators valorize the sixties. People who wrote about these artists 30 years ago still write about them in the same ways, often for the same magazines.” PeopleWayWritingYearsStillsArtistRevolutionYears AgoMagazinesSixtyVersusParadigmExhibitionsRelicsCurator Author:Jerry Saltz
“I wrote my first play at the age of 10, 55 years ago, and I've always found it a fantastic relief to imagine I know what things would be like from the point of view of other individuals and to send out signals from where I actually am not. Playwrights never need to write from the place where they are.” KnowsNeedsWritingYearsFirstsPlayWould BeAgeFoundIndividualViewsImagineYears AgoPoint Of ViewFantasticReliefSignalsPlaywright Author:Wallace Shawn
“I could write songs about politics, but I'm conscious of not writing songs that sound the same as the ones I wrote 30 years ago.” WritingYearsSongSoundConsciousYears AgoWriting Songs Author:Paul Weller
“I said it before and I’ll say it again: books are dead, plays are dead, poems are dead: there’s only movies. Music is still okay, because music is sound track. Ten, fifteen years ago, every arts student wanted to be a novelist or a playwright. I’d be amazed if you could find a single one now with such a dead-end ambition. They all want to make movies. Not write movies. You don’t write movies. You make movies.” IfsWantWritingYearsArtSaidStillsBookEndsPlayWantedSoundStudentsTenAmbitionMusic IsYears AgoOkayTrackNovelistsFifteenAmazedPlaywrightFifteen YearsDead EndsArt Students Book:Making History Source: Making History
“I don’t go back and look at my early work, because the last time I did, many years ago, it left me cringing. If one publishes, then one is creating a public record of Learning to Write.” IfsWritingYearsLooksLastsLeftRecordsCreatingYears AgoLast TimePublishEarly Work Author:Lorrie Moore
“And I thought, eight years ago, when I began carefully charting the progress of American Gods, nervously dipping my toes into the waters of blogging, would I have imagined a future in which, instead of recording the vicissitudes of bringing a book into the world, I would be writing about not-even-interestingly missing cups of cold camomile tea? And I thought, yup. Sounds about right. Happy Eighth birthday, blog.” WorldWritingYearsBookWould BeSoundWaterProgressMissingColdYears AgoEightCupsTeaToesBlogsBloggingVicissitudesAmerican GodsCharting Author:Neil Gaiman
“We did meet forty years ago. At that time we were both influenced by Whitman and I said, jokingly in part, 'I don't think anything can be done in Spanish, do you?' Neruda agreed, but we decided it was too late for us to write our verse in English. We'd have to make the best of a second-rate literature.” ThinkingWritingYearsSaidDoneLiteratureLateYears AgoDecidedRateToo LateFortyVersesSecond Rate Author:Jorge Luis Borges
“The dull people decided years and years ago, as everyone knows, that novel-writing was the lowest species of literary exertion, and that novel reading was a dangerous luxury and an utter waste of time.” PeopleKnowsWritingYearsReadingNovelDangerousWasteYears AgoDecidedSpeciesLuxuryDullWasting TimeLowestExertionNovel Writing Book:My Miscellanies Source: My Miscellanies
“In the ordinary jumble of my literary drawer, I sometimes find texts I wrote ten, fifteen, or even more years ago. And many of them seem to me written by a stranger: I simply do not recognize myself in them. There was a person who wrote them, and it was I. I experienced them, but it was in another life, from which I just woke up, as if from someone else's dream.” IfsWritingYearsPersonsSometimesDreamSeemsWrittenTenOrdinaryYears AgoStrangerFifteenDrawersAnother Life Author:Fernando Pessoa
“Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report written on birds that he'd had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books about birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, "Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.” WritingTryingYearsSaidBookThreeNextFatherWrittenAdviceTearsBrotherArmsMonthsTenPaperBirdYears AgoTasksTablesDuesShouldersOur FamilyThirtySatMy BrotherKitchenReportsNext DayPencilsBuddyWriting AdviceThirty YearsThree MonthsCabinsOlder BrotherKitchen TableBindersPaper And Pencil Book:Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life Source: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
“I loved getting my M. B. A., and I really enjoyed being an accountant and financial analyst before I quit my day job twenty-five years ago to write full time. I just liked writing more…plus, I knew even then that as a full-time writer, I'd get plenty of chances to do business-type stuff, while as an accountant, I probably wouldn't get a lot of opportunities to write about dragons.” WritingYearsJobsOpportunityStuffChanceBusinessFiveTypeYears AgoTwentiesFinancialQuittingPlentyEnjoyedFive YearsDragonsPlusTwenty FiveI QuitAccountantsAnalystsDay Jobs Author:Patricia C. Wrede
“It happened in New York, April 10th, nineteen years ago. Even my hand balks at the date. I had to push to write it down, just to keep the pen moving on the paper. It used to be a perfectly ordinary day, but now it sticks up on the calendar like a rusty nail.” WritingYearsHandsMovingUsedHappenedNew YorkPaperOrdinaryYears AgoSticksUsed To BePensNailsAprilCalendarsNineteenOrdinary Days Author:Donna Tartt
“Some years ago John Kenneth Galbraith wrote in an essay on his efforts at writing a history of economics: 'As one approaches the present, one is filled with a sense of hopelessness; in a year and possibly even a month, there is now more economic comment in the supposedly serious literature than survives from the whole of the thousand years commonly denominated as the Middle Ages ... anyone who claims to be familiar with it all is a confessing liar.' I believe that all physicists would subscribe to the same sentiments regarding their own professional literature. I do at any rate.” WritingYearsBelieveWholeAgeScienceLiteratureI BelieveEffortHistoryEconomicMiddleSeriousMonthsThousandApproachYears AgoEconomicsClaimsFilledRateFamiliarLiarsSentimentsCommentThousand YearsHopelessnessEssaysPhysicistMiddle AgesConfessingKenneth Author:Abraham Pais
“When I began my career as a cosmologist some twenty years ago, I was a convinced atheist. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that one day I would be writing a book purporting to show that the central claims of Judeo-Christian theology are in fact true, that these claims are straightforward deductions of the laws of physics as we now understand them. I have been forced into these conclusions by the inexorable logic of my own special branch of physics.” WritingYearsHas BeensBookFactsShowsDreamWould BeChristianLawScienceMy OwnCareersAtheismSpecialOne DayYears AgoLogicScientistClaimsTwentiesAtheistConvincedPhysicsTheologyConclusionBranchesWriting A BookStraightforwardTheismDeductionsLaws Of PhysicsIf There Is A GodInexorableWildest DreamsScience PhysicsGod And ScienceChristian TheologyScience GodChristian ScienceScience Books Author:Frank J. Tipler