Like most thoughtful people who watch what's going on in Washington, venting is very necessary.
It's not a problem to be surrounded by other writers if that's the craft that you're doing. I suppose if you get obsessed with the notion of being a writer more than the writing itself, that would be bad. But I live near really smart, thoughtful people who take writing very seriously, and I can meet them for breakfast and talk books.
I felt Facebook had a lot of what I appreciated about government - being around a collection of really bright, thoughtful people motivated to have a positive impact.
Thoughtful people of different political philosophies can disagree, but in a very agreeable manner.
In 19th-century France, artists were part of government. Artists are very sensitive to their time. They're very thoughtful people - it makes sense to hear what they have to say.
People in New Hampshire know that I'll talk thoughtfully, substantively about any issue.
In addition to psychopaths, 'Quantum Night' is also a novel about literally thoughtless people, without inner voices, thoughts in their heads.
Of course China is an important new market for Tod's, and of course we need to succeed commercially. But I believe the way to do that is not to aim to deliver results in the short term by thoughtless expansion, but instead to explain to the Chinese people what our brand is really about.
It tends to be overlooked that many people are indirectly affected by thoughtless and cruel journalism.
People who don't see their nature and imagine they can practice thoughtlessness all the time are lairs and fools.
I can sing the saddest song with a bunch of people, and the feeling of sharing that energy activates in a way that either heals it or makes me feel like I've risen a thousand miles above it into space, and I'm staring down on it as a little dot.
Write every day. Don't kill yourself. I think a lot of people think, 'I have to write a chapter a day' and they can't. They fall behind and stop doing it. But if you just write even one hundred words a day, it's not that much. By the end of a month, you'll have three thousand words, which is one chapter.
Once I have a hook I think has potential - enough to spin out more than a hundred thousand words, then I start turning my attention to characters. Who are these people? Why did this thing happen to them? But the hook always comes first.
Most of us end up with no more than five or six people who remember us. Teachers have thousands of people who remember them for the rest of their lives.
Every generation always thinks it was better before, and I think people have been saying this for probably thousands of years.
Perhaps not as badly applied and not as obvious, but for thousands of years, people have worn makeup on stage.
I'm going to try and make people realize that in order to live the life they are living, they need to have democracy, and it's being threatened.
The more people that learn about you, even if you're an underdog, then you can come under fire a lot and the more attention you get and the more threatening or dangerous you appear to people. And the more people try to knock you down.
You can't make yourself saved. This is very threatening to people, even Christians, because of what it seems to say about freedom.
I made it about a three-day weekend so people wouldn't have to change their clothes a lot. We didn't have an art department; we didn't have a make-up department.
