In the year 1752 it was announced that the second of September would be followed by the fourteenth. The matter was merely one of wording, of course; time in its substance was not to undergo any change.
I tell you frankly, Mrs. Damer, the more I see of different nations, the less sure I feel about the pre-eminence of my own.
Me acuerdo de ser educado, que es cuando la gente tiene miedo de que los otros se enfaden.
The great thing about a short story is that it doesn’t have to trawl through someone’s whole life; it can come in glancingly from the side.
There are some tales not for telling, whether because they are too long, too precious, too laughable, too painful, too easy to need telling or too hard to explain. After all, after years and travels my secrets are all I have left to chew on in the night.
I remember manners, that’s when people are scared to make other persons mad.
Ma’s still nodding. “You’re the one who matters, though. Just you.” I shake my head till it’s wobbling because there’s no just me.
Maybe I’m a human, but I’m a me-and-Ma as well.
I think sometimes the way to preserve the magic of a book is to throw it away – meaning, not to cling to the way a book does its magic, but to find a cinematic equivalent.
It’s painful to consider anything but writing.
Books are the air I breathe, so I don’t notice the seasons.
With a time-based medium like theater or film, you can’t have the audience getting restless in their seats. They’re stuck there on their bums; you have to pay enormous attention to pace and you can’t lose your way.
Stories are a different kind of true.
With my first book, I was hired to write a draft of the script. I was so young and less confident. They put me through seven or eight drafts and it was just getting worse and worse, and then the film was never made.
When I was a little kid I thought like a little kid, but now I’m five I know everything.
Change for your own sake, if you must, not for what you imagine another will ask of you.
Me and Ma have a deal, we’re going to try everything one time so we know what we like.
When I tell her what I’m thinking and she tells me what she’s thinking, our each ideas jumping into the other’s head, like coulouring blue crayon on top of yellow that makes green.
I’m named after Jane Austen’s Emma, and I’ve always been able to relate to her. She’s strong, confident but quite tactless.
Once I spent a whole day there, a blade of grass in each hand to anchor me to the warm earth. I watched the sun rise, pass over my head and set. Ladybirds mated on my knuckle; a shrew nibbled a hole in my stocking while I tried not to laugh. Such a day was worth any punishment.