I have written stories, essays, even whole books on trains, scribble-scribble.
I have never written that there is a threat of fascism in America. I always considered the idea overwrought. But now I believe there really is such a threat - and it will come draped not in an American flag, but in the name of tolerance and health.
Before you start production, you have characters you have created without actors in mind, then all of a sudden you've got actors. They bring an enormous amount in creating these characters, and creating the dynamics between the characters that you've written.
I rise near dawn, make a strong cup of coffee, wander to my desk and come fully awake by reading something written the day before.
From its beginning, fan fiction has been written mostly by women. Originally, this was because of a dearth of interesting female characters in conventional sci-fi.
Before I'd written movies, I never could do big set-piece scenes with a lot of different speakers - when you've got twelve people around a dinner table talking at cross purposes. I had always been impressed by other people's ability to do that.
Ireland was an idyllic place for us as children. We had all these cousins and all this green countryside. Given what I've written about rural Ireland, my memories of it are all blue skies and endless play.
The lyrics - everything I sing, I've written.
Those of us who know the transporting wonder of a reading life know that it little matters where we are when we talk about books or meet authors or bemoan the state of publishing because when we read, we are always inside, sheltered in that interior room, that clean, well-lighted, timeless place that is the written word.
Let reverence for the laws be breathed by every American mother to the lisping babe that prattles on her lap - let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in primers, spelling books, and in almanacs; let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice.
I think I have written the things I was put on Earth to write.
Whenever I watch a show and twentysomethings have a lot of 'Star Wars' references, I know it's written by a 40-year-old dude.
Novels written by university professors and set in the groves of academe are far more rigidly predictable than anything but the most routine science fiction novel, but they have escaped the stigma of being labeled as genre.
I, for one, find writing excruciating. Some mornings, as I'm on my way to my desk, my hands actually tremble with fear. The fear, of course, is that I'll sit down at the desk and discover that what I've written is claptrap. Fear inevitably leads to procrastination.
I remember looking at James Joyce's journals. It was just amazing - it looked like ants had written on the page. So much writing on one page, every corner of the page was filled. Some of the lines were underlined in yellow or blue or red. A lot of color, intense writing.
I've always written pop songs. I tend to take inspiration from more experimental genres, like ambient music, but at the root of the song, it's verse-chorus-verse.
I plan someday to do a one-man show based solely on the e-mails of Bellamy Young. And people will think I've written a brilliant comedy myself when, in fact, all the text will be directly from Bellamy.
We had a moment in the '40s and '50s, where female characters were very strong in film, where these incredible roles were written for women like Joan Crawford, like Bette Davis. But then there was a space of time where - I don't know why - it wasn't like that. It became difficult for women to find certain roles after a certain age.
What would Chaucer have written about if men were perfect?
My privacy concerns have to do with the world, other people, technology intruding upon us - what Talmudic scholars once called 'the unwanted gaze.' Here I see major issues and concerns as society evolves, and I've written often on the subject.
I have written ever since I knew mechanically how to do it.
In 1995, I sold the rights to Harry Bosch to Paramount. They had several screenplays written, but a movie never happened. Harry Bosch went on the shelf, and I had to wait 15 years to get him back.
Next to the Bible, I think the Constitution is the most important document ever written.
The Natural Law which God has written into our beings cannot be entirely eradicated, but it can be gravely deformed, leading to distortion of consciousness and conscience, and hence our actions.
'The Narrow Road to the Deep North' is one of the most famous books of all Japanese literature, written by the great poet Basho in 1689.
With film, you have very limited tools to convey subjectivity - voiceover, the camera's point of view, good acting - but even the very best actor in the world is crude by comparison with what you can do in a written paragraph.