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W.S. Merwin
Two Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry
I don't know how it works, I really don't. It comes from hearing things rather than from having ideas. I've got notes that I have made over the years, and they are very precious to me, and I sometimes ponder over the notes and see what I thought I was doing writing that down, where it was going. The notes are usually things that I seem to have overheard rather than -- they are not ideas. There is a wonderful conversation that Zola -- no, it wasn't Zola, it was Degas. Degas and Mallarmé, the French poet Mallarmé, were good friends for a long time. And Degas had always wanted to be a poet and he said to Mallarmé, "I don't understand it, year after year I've written poems and they are terrible, I know they are terrible, I know they aren't any good at all." And he said, "I don't understand it, because I have such good ideas." And Mallarmé said, "Oh, but poetry is not made with ideas; it's made with words, you have to hear the words."
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James Michener
Pulitzer Prize-Winning Novelist
James Michener: A fundamental difference between other people and me is that when I start a project, I know it's going to take at least three years. So two things ensue. One, it has to be a pretty good idea to keep me excited for three years. And two, I have to have a pretty good head of steam just to keep going physically and mentally for three years. I work every day of the week. I get up early and go right to the typewriter. And I have to take time out for research or a trip here or there or for my professional obligations. But I work every day. And if any one of us listening to this program were to work ten hours a day, seven days a week, for three years, I would expect something to come out of it. Especially, if you had a pretty good education to begin with, and you had some help from your friends, and review point of view from your editors and colleagues, and the company you are working for, so I don't think that what I do is at all remarkable. It's the result of three, four, five years of intelligent application. And fortunately, I've been able to do that and recommend it to everybody else.
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Norman Mineta
Former U.S. Secretary of Transportation
One of the things about people in politics is that they get their sights set when they're at this point of where they want to be at some point in the future, and they start making decisions here on how they think that will be helpful to get them to this point -- here. The problem is, they generally will trip over something right in front of them because they have their sights set on something way over here, and that is something I haven't done. I have always worked hard at the job I'm at, and then really you're in control, because if an opportunity comes up, then you are in control of saying "Yes, I want to do this," or "No, I don't want to go this direction." But if you have already planned your steps on what you are going to do and how you are going to get there, then you're on somebody else's time scale and somebody else's track, and you're just moving about trying to adjust based on what you think will get you to the next step. So one of the things, as I reflect back, is I've always worked hard at the job I'm at, and that will always open up opportunities for the future, and rather than being set like a robot to get somewhere in a certain time period.
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