"I've never had writer's block for the same reason I've never had the lasagna at the Olive Garden: It just seems terrible and I don't want it. But from about 18 to 28, I did mercilessly reject a lot of my own ideas for not being original enough. It wasn't writer's block. If you pointed a gun at my head, I could have written those ideas, but I made a decision to only write what I liked. There's a difference. And it was a bad decision, because 'not being original enough' is usually a bad reason for not liking something. There are countless important stories in the world that follow the same structure over and over, whether it's the Bible or Superman or Star Wars. Don't let similarities stifle you. Indeed, they're liberating."
"The Force Awakens isn't out yet, as of the time of this writing, and if it is in fact just a Greatest Hits collection of famous scenes from the last six movies...well, how can I complain? That's pretty close to how the original was made, too. A recycling project. But then you realize that, actually, we've been 'recycling' the same stories with the same characters for thousands of years. You groan when you hear they're making a live action remake of 1989's The Little Mermaid, but we've actually been re-telling that story since 1836. And that's nothing—the earliest written version of Cinderella is more than 2,000 fucking years old, and the oral telling of the story probably predates the written word. And you know what? Five hundred years from now, they'll probably still be making Star Wars. The movies will be just as cynical, the shelves will be full of products, and little kids' eyes will go just as wide the first time they hear that ominous, mechanical breathing.
"And that, there, is the final step in the cynicism progression, the 'Santa is Real After All' phase. The realization that joy persists, not in spite of cynicism, but alongside it."
"And that, there, is the final step in the cynicism progression, the 'Santa is Real After All' phase. The realization that joy persists, not in spite of cynicism, but alongside it."
