If at noon you sit down and there's just silence or blank tape, in an hour if you have a song, that didn't exist an hour ago. Now it exists and it might exist for a long time. There's something empowering about that.
As chefs, especially pastry chefs, your creativity plays such an important part in your daily work. We truly do have a blank canvas to work with every time we create a new dish.
By the time I sit down and face the blank page I am raring to go. I tell it as if I'm talking to my best friend or one of my grandchildren.
My favorite thing is to be alone in a room with a blank paper in front of me and the time to fill it.
My perfect day is sitting in a room with some blank paper. That's heaven. That's gold, and anything else is just a waste of time.
My mind is changing all the time. I can't live in a space that has a fixed aesthetic. I just need a blank slate when I come home.
The writing process is the time where nothing's been set in stone. It's a blank slate, or a blank page.
In the '80s and '90s, China went through a giant change. It needed all resources. At the time, I was in the recycled paper business, and I realized the China market was a blank slate.
That nice, soft pillow and the warm blanket, and it's all comfortable, and no one wants to leave that comfort - but if you can wake up early in the morning, get a head start on everyone else that's still sleeping, get productive time doing things that you need to do - that's a huge piece to moving your life forward.
The truth is, I do some of my best writing at 3 A.M. while blasting 'Every Time I Die' into my ear drums.
Alice Munro is an atomic writer blasting doors into narrative time.
In the country the darkness of night is friendly and familiar, but in a city, with its blaze of lights, it is unnatural, hostile and menacing. It is like a monstrous vulture that hovers, biding its time.
Johnny Blaze was my character at OVW. I had all these fancy fire catchphrases: 'Call the fire department,' 'Get your fire extinguishers out, ladies.' 'By the time you hear the thunder, it's going to be too late because the lightning will have already struck.' That was all my thing.
I'm wearing a blazer, like, all the time. That's my go-to - a blazer - and I can just figure out if I want to wear jeans or slacks. Turn it into a suit.
'Tropic Thunder' is one of my favorite movies of all time. 'Blazing Saddles.' Anything that will get me to smile.
The last time I ordered soup in a restaurant was - well, let me see - possibly never. That's because in my mind, soup is something to be made and eaten at home, ideally with a cuddly animal at your feet in front of a blazing fireplace while the wind whips outside.
Often, when you look at history, at least through the lens that many of us have looked at history - high school and college courses - a lot of the color gets bled out of it. You're left with a time period that does not look as strange and irrational as the time you're actually living through.
What makes it difficult for people trying to follow a dream is that the whole time you feel like you're slamming your head against the wall. So it's nice to make a breakthrough and not kind of lying there with your head bleeding.
In our time, there are still many, like those in the Good Samaritan story, who being of the religious classes in that time, purposely crossed to the other side of the road, and passed by the injured and bleeding.
We are not outraged by blood. We see blood all the time. Blood is pervasive in movies, television, and video games. Yet, we are outraged by the fact that one openly discusses bleeding from an area that we try to claim ownership over.
