“The great thing about fiction is that I don't have to settle on an answer to any troubling question, or even a solution. I hope that my stories serve as explorations and help show readers how and why real-life women don't always make the "correct" decisions in the face of economic and sexual troubles. We all screw up, but the women I write about don't have back-up plans or money in the back or resources to fix what they have broken.”
Thoughtful feeling
Thoughtful Quotes — page 215 of 303
“I wasn't writing stories with the intention of creating a particular collection. I simply wrote stories, and then discovered common themes among a good number of them.”
“I'm not much interested in my own self when I write. I'm interested in what I observe out there, what's going on around me.”
“I read stories aloud at every stage. I listen to my writer friends when they kindly offer criticism. I listen to my husband when he tells me something doesn't seem right. I have my mother's boyfriend, Loring Janes, read to make sure I get everything right with the machines and guns.”
“The crucial thing is to look in an informed way at what's going on. Look at the way in which we are forced by our imbalanced system to push away people who might contribute mightily to the NHS.”
“I don't think I'm extremely intelligent by any means.”
“I prefer a much looser style. Any time a writer thinks he has all the answers to how someone should talk or react or end a scene, it's a spontaneity - killer. I don't get making sure you get every word right in some stupid speech just because a writer sat there and did it.”
“I think I created my particular stage persona out of my dad's life. And perhaps I even built it to suit him to some degree. I was looking for - when I was looking for a voice to mix with my voice, I put on my father's work clothes, as I say in the book, and I went to work.”
“I could never write my memoirs, just because too many people are still alive and would be hurt.”
“I think there's often a negative associated with being passionate or geeky about entertainment, but for me, entertainment has always been a greater, psychological escape, so I think it's unfortunate when others don't appreciate the depth of passion entertainment offers.”
“I have to chose my words carefully.”
“What I invite people to do is to look at their lives just the way that they have lived them. Not to change anything, and not to do positive thinking at all.”
“Sometimes the concept you're questioning makes more sense to ask just the second one and not the first one.”
“One of the reasons we judge each other so harshly in this world of parenting is because... we perceive anyone else who's doing anything differently than what we're doing as criticizing our choices.”
“Everybody values their train, but they want to zero-out other people's trains.”
“The fact is that everybody around a college basketball game - the coaches, the announcers, even the referees at a lower level - calculates when the game is really over. They calculate it with intuition and guesswork.”
“Everything is accessible to everyone all the time, and I think there are wondrous things to treasure with what the Internet has made available to journalists. But I think it's also had some effects that are less pleasant. It has chipped away at a sense of privacy and secrecy.”
“Choosing my favorite moment in journalism would be like picking a favorite among my children. I can't pick one favorite.”
“The films that I do tend to polarise people's views.”
“I remember talking to Alex Ferguson about Tony [Blair] and Gordon [Brown], and he said: "Why doesn't Tony just get rid of him?" But if you sack someone in football, they can't turn up to training the next day. In politics they're still on the pitch. Gordon would still have been a big player.”