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Success made me self-sufficient, but it also took away my anonymity. I'm just this quiet nobody, and all of a sudden people are nervous around me. That was kind of weird.
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It can be really powerful to write something when youre sad.
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All I do and say and think 'as a poet' is much truer and more intimate than anything I say face to face.
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As an improviser you need to experience the moment- and that includes everything in the moment. Observe the people around you-the bandleader, the bartender-what they wear, how they deal with people, the simple continuity of their presence. As you do that you'll see how you affect them , and you'll play and act accordingly. You need to study the reality of the moment, and that is very rarely about studying modes and intervals.
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Writers who are activists are very rarely taken seriously as artists.
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As a writer, my main objective is to tell the story urgently - as if whispering it into one ear - and to know the characters intimately.
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Life is only limited by our prejudices. Destroy them, and you cease to be at the mercy of yourself.
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I almost never shoot people.
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If I do get a handgun, I can take it to the sheriff's department, and in about as much time as it would take me to order a value meal at Wendy's, they will give me a concealed-carry license. There will be no screening at all to see whether I'm qualified to carry a gun in public - which I absolutely am not. That's one of the reasons I haven't gotten a gun in the first place: I don't know how to use one.
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I don't believe in divorce. I believe in widowhood.
