Since graduation I have measured time in 4-by-5-inch pieces of paper four days on the left and three on the right. Every social engagement interview reading flight doctor's appointment birthday and dry-cleaning reminder has been handwritten between metal loops.
I wrapped my Christmas presents early this year but I used the wrong paper. See the paper I used said 'Happy Birthday' on it. I didn't want to waste it so I just wrote 'Jesus' on it.
The government's view is that the best time to announce bad news news that it doesn't want the public to dwell on is late on a Friday when it will wind up in the Saturday papers which if you were readers then the week day editions. A holiday weekend is even better.
All the best performers bring to their role something more something different than what the author put on paper. That's what makes theatre live. That's why it persists.
Ideas are elusive slippery things. Best to keep a pad of paper and a pencil at your bedside so you can stab them during the night before they get away.
The genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges or churches or parlors nor even in its newspapers or inventors but always most in the common people.
My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.
Experience taught me a few things. One is to listen to your gut no matter how good something sounds on paper. The second is that you're generally better off sticking with what you know. And the third is that sometimes your best investments are the ones you don't make.
The pattern of a newspaperman's life is like the plot of 'Black Beauty.' Sometimes he finds a kind master who gives him a dry stall and an occasional bran mash in the form of a Christmas bonus sometimes he falls into the hands of a mean owner who drives him in spite of spavins and expects him to live on potato peelings.
It was one of those evenings when men feel that truth goodness and beauty are one. In the morning when they commit their discovery to paper when others read it written there it looks wholly ridiculous.