Quotes about "Success & Achievement"

Acting is a weird, kind of alienating job because you're in an isolated place. Even if you're working with a lot of other people, you're kind of alienated. Actors say that a lot, and I kind of find that to be true. ”

Books should have a purpose. Books should be practical in some sense. ”

The Haters' has some of the generalities of band experiences that I've had - the camaraderie, the grubbiness, the outsized collective ambitions and frequent painful collisions with reality - but very few of the specifics. I guess it was a way for me to take some of my experiences to their logical crazy extremes. ”

Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends, and society are the natural enemies of the writer. He must be alone, uninterrupted, and slightly savage if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking. ”

I think that everybody's worked on shows where you feel like maybe a divide has happened between the talent and the crew. Those are the hardest jobs to do your best in, because as you're performing, you're aware that the people around you, because they haven't been afforded the respect that they deserve, they're not as invested. ”

The culture of the U.S. military is such that human enhancement is accepted as a goal, taking people beyond the norm. There are so many resources going into that kind of research. ”

I don't know that any writing comes easily, but I certainly get more immersed in novels. I don't think the routine is any different, but fiction tends to pull me further away from my life. When I'm deep in a novel, I don't pay bills and I walk around in one shoe, drinking two-day old coffee, and calling my kids by the wrong names. ”

I teach in M.F.A. programs now, and I think that's a great way to become a novelist, but I mourn that Pete Dexter and Joan Didion's route is maybe less likely because there are fewer of those jobs. I always liken it to playing piano in some great dive jazz bar. You didn't pick the songs, you played what people asked for, but you got your chops. ”

I am Left-wing. I am a socialist. I believe in sharing wealth. There's no two ways about it. ”

And really the purpose of art - for me, fiction - is to alert, to indicate to stop, to say: Make certain that when you rush through you will not miss the moment which you might have had, or might still have. ”