I had a great life at Boeing. I'd been there for 37 years and contributed to all the Boeing airplanes as a designer: the 707, 727, 37, 47, 57, 67 and 'triple 7' and the 87.
I get e-mails from mothers asking me to call their daughters for a date. I have a great life.
The myth that everyone once read great literature is just a myth.
When I read great literature, great drama, speeches, or sermons, I feel that the human mind has not achieved anything greater than the ability to share feelings and thoughts through language.
I take a certain pride in having maintained a reputation for fast copy throughout my newspaper career. Fast-breaking stories left my typewriter in a hurry. Not great literature, perhaps, but fast, and usually accurate.
It's what's missing, I think, from most music - the rebellious part. That rebelliousness is part of great rock music or great literature or any great creative stuff.
I think you can find all the elements that you can find in great literature in mundane experiences.
I never wanted to become an actress because I'd read great literature or seen great Shakespeare. It was more just wanting to understand what the people were really like, why they said all the strange things they did.
Great literature should do some good to the reader: must quicken his perception though dull, and sharpen his discrimination though blunt, and mellow the rawness of his personal opinions.
Of course the illusion of art is to make one believe that great literature is very close to life, but exactly the opposite is true. Life is amorphous, literature is formal.
I'm not writing great literature. I'm writing commercial fiction for people to enjoy the stories and to like the characters.
The idea behind a dish - the delight and the surprise - makes a difference. Great literature surprises and delights, and provokes us. It isn't just 'Here's the facts - boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl.' It's how you tell it.
And in down times it shakes a lot of the bad SF out, a lot the stuff that was bought for literary reasons, which is neither entertaining nor great literature.
Hopefully, reading and being around great literature inspires me to write songs, but I'm not sure about that.
To me, characters are at the heart of great literature.
I get upset about what is taken as great literature and what is cute and exotic.
Novelists get to say plenty in their massive tomes; rock singers only get four-minute songs with two verses and a chorus' worth of lyrics, and so there's a real pleasure in accessing the intelligence behind the music, even if it doesn't qualify as 'great literature.'
When I was a kid, I went through the whole process of reading great literature and trying to be very widely read.
No one bothered reading the books and understanding - and again, I'm not being high-falutin' about it - but I think our books are great literature with great metaphors of real life dealing with fears and hopes.
I haven't had that one great love, which is good. I don't want that to be in the past - I want it to be in the future.
