Thursday, March 26, 2009

She's no lady, she's Madonna

I'm a perfectionist. and I'm under lots of pressure. Sometimes you have to be a bitch to get things done. I can be something of a tyrant. In a working situation. Well, in a living situation too.

Madonna, quoted in the chapter, "Fame and Power," in Madonna: The Style Book, by Debbi Voller, p. 82.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

She's a lady...

And most male music — not all of it but the good stuff — really lays it on you. It really puts you against the wall and that's what I'd like to do. I'd like my music to intrude. Not many females succeed with that. I identify more with male musicians than female musicians because I tend to think of female musicians as ... ah ... females.

--Kate Bush, interviewed in the book, She's a Rebel By Gillian G. Gaar, p. 223.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

The double life of the writer

I wrote out of desperation. In the great turmoil and gloom and euphoria of adolescence, I found there was nowhere to express the chaos of emotions I was feeling, nowhere but in words. I began to rely so much on writing that I was living a double life—one in the world and one on the page. The one on the page was more intense, more satisfying and for a long time much more real.

--Susan Minot, “A Real-Life Education,” in The Writing Life: Writers on How They Think and Work, p. 50.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Language as a spiritual adventure

My love of writing grew out of my love of reading, with which my very life is identified. I can't imagine a mental life, a spiritual existence, not inextricably bound up with language of a formal, meditated nature. Telling stories, choosing an appropriate language with which to express each story: This seems to me quintessentially human, one of the great adventures of our species.

(Joyce Carol Oates, "The Importance of Childhood," in The Writing Life: Writers on How They Think and Work, p. 12)