The stuff I write with Joe Lo Truglio tends to lean towards horror-comedy and horror.
When I write nonfiction, it's always absolutely true. There will be no moment in my nonfiction where I have made something up and have to apologize to the bullying hostess of a talk show.
I want to sell to people my own age, because that's the way I write songs.
I write short stories, and I wrote a play.
Every book I've written has been a different attempt to understand something, and the success or failure of the previous one is irrelevant. I write the book I want.
I write songs about stuff that I can't really get past personally - and then I write a song about it and I feel better.
As soon as I am up, I brush my hair. I eat breakfast first: tea and brown bread, and sometimes a fresh fruit juice like orange or grapefruit. I write notes on the previous day in my notebook, then I shower.
I have no idea why I write. The old standards are: I like to express my feelings, stretch my imagination, earn money.
Music inspires me and puts me in the right mood, but to actually listen to it when I write - I find it gets in the way.
There is this assumption that much of what I write is about my life, and that simply is not true.
I write because I have an innate need to. I write because I can't do normal work. I write because I want to read books like the ones I write. I write because I am angry at everyone. I write because I love sitting in a room all day writing. I write because I can partake of real life only by changing it.
When people ask what I write about, that's what I tell them: 'The drama of human relationships.' I'm not even close to running out of material.
I read for the sensation of becoming another person; I write for the same sensation.
I'm always writing, even when I'm not at my desk. I write on my hands. I used to write on my kids' hands, too, but they don't let me any more. When I'm driving I sometimes write all the way up my arms.
I write - though perhaps it sounds pretentious to say so - to make a clearing in the wilderness, to find out what I care about and what exactly to make of it.
I can't remove the autobiographical slant from the things I write. You always bring yourself into what you're writing.
The Florida in my novels is not as seedy as the real Florida. It's hard to stay ahead of the curve. Every time I write a scene that I think is the sickest thing I have ever dreamed up, it is surpassed by something that happens in real life.
Whatever I write, no matter how gray or dark the subject matter, it's still going to be a comic novel.
I write fiction that reflects Islamic logic: fictional worlds where cause and effect are governed by Muslim rationale. However, my characters do not necessarily behave as 'good' Muslims; they are not ideals or role models.
I write about the trials and triumphs of contemporary life - and often the readers see themselves between the lines of the story.
Sound-wise, I'm really limitless in the way I write songs. Whatever comes out, comes out. Every song is completely different.
I'll sit around and play my guitar; that's how I write tunes.
I write the kinds of novels I like to read, where the setting is rendered with love and care.
With the strong women I write about, I want to create a sense of strong possibilities.
I have a friend who calls me the queen of the nightmares because I've always had really bad nightmares. I keep a notebook by the side of my bed, so I'll wake up in the night from a bad dream, and my heart's pounding, and I'm really scared, but I write it down, and sometimes I get ideas for books that way.
Real people - the interesting ones, anyway - don't remain static, and neither do the ones I write about. Changes take place, and they react to them.
The people whose necks hurt when I write about the Middle East tend to live in Brooklyn or Boca Raton: the kind of Zionist who pays another man to live in Israel for him. I have nothing but contempt for such people.
I think I write fiction for the opportunity to get beyond the limits of my own life.
I write the vocals last, because I wanted to invent the music first and push the music to the level that I had to compete against it.
I won't get into it any more than to say that there are parts of me in all the songs that I write.
I write songs about fat girls and about men who run off to Mexico.
I have seen so many poets who were famous, who won all sorts of prizes, disappear with their death. I write as good as I can and don't try to turn that into some hope for a future that I could never know.
The best songs I write in 20 minutes.
Every book I write, the media just keeps punching me in the face.
If I hear a conversation and somebody says something intriguing, my first thought is, 'Is that a song?' I write all year long, and at the end of the year I pull these forty or fifty things out and say which of these things do I want to record.
If I write the song, I get to name it.
