Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" Words don't come very easily to me. Which, given my profession, is a worrying impediment. "

Related Quotes:

" I miss independent record stores very much. "

" I have boys, and boys are particularly resistant to reading books. I had some success recently with Sherman Alexie's great young adult novel 'The Absolutely True Diary Of A Part-Time Indian.' I told my son it was highly inappropriate for him and one of the most banned books in America. That got his attention, and he raced through it. "

" I do not wish to produce prose that draws attention to itself, rather than the world it describes. "

" I think it does everybody a lot of good to have a period of no success. "

" My computer is littered with abandoned projects. "

" At a crude estimate, I must have played 'Thunder Road' 1,500 times. "

" I can't stand it when writers moan about what film-makers might do or have done to their books. There's a very simple answer: don't take the money. "

" You can't really ask for anything more than to be working for your entire life - and to be doing something that some people respond to. "

" We can't be as good as we'd want to, so the question then becomes, how do we cope with our own badness? "

" I used to go and see the Clash a fair bit. I did think they were dead cool, and very handsome. "

" I think the moment you're writing about somebody who's not exactly you, then the challenge is all equal. "

" I've never met anyone who is seriously bad. "

" I spent as much time watching telly and films when I was a kid as I did lying around reading books. I think it's crazy that writers are only allowed to say that certain books have influenced them. "

" We need a romantic illusion to embark on relationships in the first place. After that, they survive or fail for other, more practical reasons. "

" The more screenwriting you do, the more you become aware that particular scenes aren't going to end up in the movie because they're too expensive. That has perhaps changed the way I think about writing novels, actually, because now I write expensive scenes whenever I can. "

" The writing in those HBO dramas, like 'The Wire,' is as good as anything I've seen. "

" When you see the poet laureate saying that every child should have read 'Ulysses' and that you're just giving up on children if you think it's elitist - does that include children with special needs or whose first language isn't English? "

" All the Oscars stuff for 'An Education' was incredibly exciting, especially because it was such an underdog project - no one would give us the money for it, and we all nearly gave up because it wasn't getting anywhere, then suddenly a breakthrough and this really lovely film, which then took on a life of its own. "

" One of the depressing things one realizes as one gets older is how much of one's tastes and attitudes are simply products of economic circumstance at the time. "

" I think I am naturally depressive. "

" The best bit of novel writing is being allowed to write exactly what you want at the speed that you want, and to include as many different people and places and times as you want, working with pretty much only one person, the editor, whose job it is to get it in good shape for publication. "

" The easiest thing to write was 'Fever Pitch' because it was a memoir. "

" The Oscars are like a political campaign. You have to have the right candidates, and the people in Hollywood know what they are. "

" I only read the very best music books. Donald Fagan's memoir 'Eminent Hipsters' is great. Bob Dylan's memoir 'Chronicles' and Patty Smith's 'Just Kids' are both incredible. "

" Lots of times when I'm offered things, I can't see how a story gets filmed. Either it's too internal or it doesn't have a strong spine. "

" Sometimes when people are attached to a project, they need persuading to stay attached, and then, in retrospect, they're not the right person. "

" When someone says they've read your book 15 times, you think, 'Well, you should read something else.' "

" I always naturally want to change things up if I possibly can. I never want to write a sequel to a book. I don't want to go back over things. I don't want to adapt my own books for the screen. That's something that's important to me, the keeping it fresh. "

" I used to be a teacher, and I know how difficult it is to strike a balance between focused conversation and an atmosphere which prevents creativity and thought. "

" In a way, novel writing is such a permanently student lifestyle. When it comes to movies, and you have to go to these meetings and try and impress people and get money out of them, I feel as though I'm playacting at being somebody who's grown up. "