Joshua Cohen Quotes

The digital native doesn't send a letter to the editor anymore. She goes online and starts a blog.

Vast volumes of mixed media surround us, from music to games and videos. Yet almost all of our online actions still begin and end with writing: text messages, status updates, typed search queries, comments and responses, screens packed with verbal exchanges and, underpinning it all, countless billions of words.

We all know the dangers of sequels. Lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place too often, and I think you've got to move beyond it, go the extra mile and have the courage not to just repeat the first one.

One of the things that I've been trying to do with my characters, one of the things that does lead to me turning things down, is I don't really want to repeat myself.

The Internet is a tool, a technology, and we like to say that it has all of these properties, but really, it's just a place where our writing is.

The Internet has given us 10 or 15 new styles of communication: long messages like blogging, and then short messages like texting and tweeting. I see it all as part of an expanding array of linguistic possibilities.

When I read a script and have my first interaction with this character, do I feel like there's something I'm gonna' learn here? If I feel like it's something I've done before, then what's the incentive for me to do it?

I would be horrible at Twitter. I wouldn't know the answer to fans' questions half the time - and the patience involved! I couldn't imagine. I did have a Twitter account that I tried for a couple days, but found I had nothing to say.

I enjoy reading blogs, but am not interested in having my spurious thoughts out there.

The great writers just kept bringing them out. They didn't care if they repeated themselves.

The Internet has changed everything. We expect to know everything instantly. If you don't understand digital communication, you're at a disadvantage.

I am not one of the new media experts working all the time with my computers and the PowerPoints and things of that sort.

I thought that there might be something unsatisfying about directing two Tolkien movies after 'Lord of the Rings.' I'd be trying to compete with myself and deliberately doing things differently.

Twitter was like a poem. It was rich, real and spontaneous. It really fit my style. In a year and a half, I tweeted 60,000 tweets, over 100,000 words. I spent a minimum eight hours a day on it, sometimes 24 hours.

Speaking of Twitter, I don't even know if I composed a blog entry in 2009, as I was too busy parceling my every thought into cute 140-character sound bites. I used to only worry about being pithy for a living; now some of my best lines are wasted on a free app!

I am a little curmudgeonly about new media.

I've quite often written tweets that I think are across that line, but I just delete them.

I rarely tweet unless I'm talking about 'The Bachelor.' I have a love/hate relationship with Instagram, though - it's like a rigid parent. It's much more restrictive with what can be posted, but you can write a full paragraph, post a video - it changes the game a little bit.

Internet is exemplary for me. I do not want to have the feeling of writing 'for eternity,' so to speak. The fleetingness of the Internet has therefore become very attractive to me.

It's intimidating any time to have a piece of art that someone else created, and that person says, 'Let's see what you created based on what I created.'

If I come on three days after the Super Bowl and say pretty much what everybody else has said, what's the point? That was the tricky thing... coming up with a new angle every time - or most times, because you couldn't bat a thousand.

If I was on Twitter, I'd probably get in trouble pretty quickly.

You can type things on the Internet. You can have no credentials in any area and just get on your smart phone and write whatever you want.

I don't use Twitter to share my thoughts - I use it to make statements that are quite blunt and hopefully fun.

If there was Twitter when I wrote some of my early stuff, there'd be no 'Matilda.'