We're in a very competitive industry, and sometimes the bigger Hollywood things are not so risk takey. I find myself mostly existing in this weirdo indie world, which I feel really comfortable being in. The thing that motivates me the most is to try to do something way different than the last thing that I did.
What a heartbreaking job it is trying to combine authors for their own protection... the first lesson I learned was that when you take the field for the authors you will be safer without a breastplate than without a backplate.
The great dividing line between books that are made to be read and books that are made to be bought is not the purely modern thing it seems. We can trace it, if we try, back to the first printing-presses.
And, as for what is called improving conversation, that is merely the foolish method by which the still more foolish philanthropist feebly tries to disarm the just rancour of the criminal classes.
Courage and willingness to just go for it, whether it is a conversation or a spontaneous trip or trying new things that are scary - it is a really attractive quality.
All infractions of love and equity in our social relations are speedily punished-by fear...be honest with a man and you have no fear. Try to deceive and the relationship deteriorates.
I am trying to make, before I get through, a picture of the whole world--or as much of it as I have seen. Boiling it down always, rather than spreading it out too thin. (On Writing.)
The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day when you are writing a novel you will never be stuck. That is the most valuable thing I can tell you so try to remember it.
I'm about to embark on what may be as important as an initiative as anything I do as President, trying to nudge the world in the direction of doing something serious about climate change.
Improvisation sometimes seemed more like jazz than acting, like verbal jazz, with the actors playing a theme back and forth, and then introducing another theme, incorporating it, somehow trying to work their way all together to a meaning of some kind, or at least a conclusion.
I am conscious of trying to stretch the boundaries of non-fiction writing. It's always surprised me how little attention many non-fiction writers pay to the formal aspects of their work.
I was popular at some times and not so popular at other times. But what mattered was trying to solve problems and deal with circumstances. Some of which I was able to anticipate. Some of which caught us totally by surprise.