Novelists have always had complete freedom to pretty much tell their story any way they saw fit. And that's what I'm trying to do.
I feel I should be trying to complete my life, whatever 'completing a life' means.
Stop trying to change reality by attempting to eliminate complexity.
We're all complicit in the things we may be trying to oppose. I'm complicit in the things that I'm trying to oppose.
It was like a complicit - there was complicity between the churches and the state in taking care of the 'Indian problem,' solving the 'Indian problem,' and trying to change who we were.
I've always been paying my taxes and I've always been trying to comply.
If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music.
If you're driving home and your kids are playing up in the back seat, I'm pretty sure that's taxing. You're trying to hold your composure, you're trying not to shout at them.
Before 'Dilbert,' I tried to become a computer programmer. In the early days of computing, I bought this big, heavy, portable computer for my house. I spent two years nights and weekends trying to write games that I thought I would sell. Turns out I'm not that good a programmer, so that was two years that didn't work out.
I'm not trying to do conceptual art.
I am not bound to spend my precious days on Earth trying to keep up with the Joneses - because the Joneses are really just a bunch of folks in conference rooms changing 'trends' rapidly to create fake monthly emergencies for us.
I think in art, but especially in films, people are trying to confirm their own existences.
I'm trying to conquer swimming. I'm getting there. I've gotta conquer it. I had a fear of drowning and tunnels and flying. I started flying and got my pilot's license, so I conquered that. Now, I'm onto swimming and tunnels.
I'm not interested in provoking people, but only in trying to be consoling.
We need to ask elected officials supporting Keystone XL whether they're willing to put their constituents and our environment at risk so that foreign oil tycoons get a better return on their tar sands investments. Keystone XL backers will keep trying to sell us a sucker's deal; it's up to us to say no.
We are trying to construct a more inclusive society. We are going to make a country in which no one is left out.
I'm trying to construct a world that maximises the probability that SpaceX continues its mission without me.
I'm trying to deal with ideas about histories, fame, hearsay, and how public identities are constructed.
I read a great deal of science fiction with consummate pleasure between, say, the ages of 12 and 16. Then I got away from it. In my mid- to late 20s, I started trying to write it.
Judgment is contained in the act of trying to understand.
