American - Writer | -
My seven-year-old daughter knows old songs and how the neighborhoods got their names. There are little things: Businesses receive blessings from Hawaiian priests before opening, and everyone's kids have their debut luau. You can't really get through a day without doing something Hawaiian.
Kaui Hart Hemmings
DaughterDayLittle ThingsBlessings
Hawaii is so complex; there are so many points of view, and there are so many experiences to see and to find.
ViewHawaiiFindSeeComplexMany
I try to think of it not as writer's block, but a time where you just need to live life and experience things so you have something to write about.
LifeLiveLive LifeTimeExperience
In putting setting to work, I like to think about long shots and close-ups. The long shot is the overall view of the place in which the characters live - the island, the town, the wide sweep of place. Then we narrow in. The close-up, the tight focus, makes the place different from anywhere else.
WorkLiveFocusThinkViewLong
Tragedy brings change, and that's what I'm interested in most - how people plunge into change and try to fight, then eventually move with it with grace.
ChangeFightPeopleGraceTragedy
I just try to write what I think would really happen, and with grief and tragedy, there are these naturally occurring moments of levity and humor and absurdity. I think that's what life is really like. Sadness gets interrupted, and happiness gets interrupted.
LifeHappinessGriefHumorThink
Two days a week, I go to my office at The Grotto, a writer's collective in San Francisco. I get there at 8:15 and write until around 1 or 2 P.M.
WeekGoWriteOfficeTwoDays
For my 11th birthday, I asked to be adopted.
BirthdayAskedAdopted
The entire island knows our father, Fred Hemmings, Jr. - kids, adults, surfers, the governor, grocery clerks, gang members who call our house at night and threaten to kill us as soon as they get out of jail. Fred was a world-champion surfer and is now a well-known, controversial politician.
FatherNightHouseNowIslandJail
I felt like I haven't had the typical experience of a novelist whose book becomes a movie.
ExperienceBookWhoseLikeMovie
After college, I moved to Breckenridge, Colorado, and went snowboarding every day. I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I knew what I didn't want to do. So I applied to grad school for writing, and I just gave it a shot and took it from there.
DaySchoolCollegeWritingEvery Day
The beauty of cinema is that it can do some things that novels just can't.
BeautyCinemaThingsJustSome
Copyright © 2024 QuotesDict Kaui Hart Hemmings quotes