I'll write maybe one long paragraph describing the events, then a page or two breaking the events into chapters, and then reams of pages delving into my characters. After that, I'm ready to begin.
No one is immune from the larger events of his or her time - the Depression, World War II, civil rights, Vietnam, the spring of 1989 in China. These events intrude upon our lives and radically affect our directions.
A president either is constantly on top of events or, if he hesitates, events will soon be on top of him. I never felt that I could let up for a moment.
Human beings are accustomed to think of intellect as the power of having and controlling ideas and of ability to learn as synonymous with ability to have ideas. But learning by having ideas is really one of the rare and isolated events in nature.
When we did concerts, we wanted them to be theatrical events - collaborations with designers, choreographers, and directors - because we thought traditional rock concerts were boring.
It was but then, when you're, one of the great poisonous events that have infected us all who were in South Africa is that the idea of difference is drip fed into your veins. It's that that you fight.
I've done a lot of Super Bowls and appeared in a lot of big, big events and places and the Masters and what have you, but there was nothing as intimidating as speaking with Billy Graham.
Nothing in the reporting of a nation's history could so mislead the younger generation as to represent great events in such a way that they appear to have happened as a matter of course.
Instead, I was interested in what I guess I could call narrative indeterminacy, in questioning the apparent, taken-for-granted authority of any particular representation of the events in question.
There were mornings in the make-up trailer where I'd have fits of laughter because of the extraordinary daily events of the shoot. Sometimes, it was all too much to believe. But the wildest things happened.
