Early on, I said to myself that I would like to write a kind of moral and spiritual history of a place. It sounds a little pretentious, I know. But that's really what I set for myself.
Poetry is a release of something previously unknown into the visible. You write to invite that, to make of yourself a gathering of the unexpected and, with luck, of the unexpectable.
Poetry says the things that I can't say. I read a lot, but I never write it.
If I'd learned nothing else, it was this: If you want to be a great writer, be a man. If you can't be a man, write like one.
I don't think anyone sits down and thinks, 'I know, I'll be a chick-lit writer.' You write the book that you want to write and then other people say, 'Oh, that's chick-lit.' You say, 'Okay.' But it's not like you look around and go to a careers fair and there will be someone at the chick-lit author stand.
One could write a history of science in reverse by assembling the solemn pronouncements of highest authority about what could not be done and could never happen.
I never wanted to write. I just wrote letters home from a kibbutz in Israel to reassure my parents that I was still alive and well fed and having a great time. They thought these letters were brilliant and sent them to a newspaper. So I became a writer by accident.
With songs, I've always pledged to be honest. I write my songs because I've lived them.
And I'm not trying to write heavy songs.
I think sometimes I write to impress my influences. Whether they're actually acquaintances of mine, people that I think will hear the record or not, I still write - not to imitate my influences - but to write something that would live up to their standards.
The modern economics of the theater is such that we write plays with fewer and fewer characters.
When I write in Italian - this is just the metaphor that came to me immediately, and I really think this is what it is - I feel like I'm writing with my left hand. Because of that weakness, there is this enormous freedom that comes with it.
I often get asked how I write so much. As any writer knows, the answer is to write a lot more than you actually publish.
I try to write relevant songs about life and whatever I'm going through and whatever people are going through.
Joe Lansdale is one of the few writers able to write in whatever genre or mode he wants on any particular day. How? He doesn't ask permission. He just steps in, out-writes everybody in the room.
I tend to write the episodes in the middle of the season, which can be a challenge because you've got to balance all these threads that have begun - and also make sure they will make sense with the overall plan going forward.
Whenever I write about motherhood - and I write about it a lot - I am drawing on my experiences as a mother and also my experiences as a daughter.
If I ask you to write down the last 4 digits of your social security number, and then take you out to lunch and ask you how many dentists there are in Manhattan, there's going to be a high correlation between those two numbers. What happens is that the number psychologically makes you feel confident.
I believed, after writing 'Mrs. Kimble,' that I knew how to write a novel. I quickly discovered that I only knew how to write that novel. 'Baker Towers' was a different beast entirely; and I felt as though I had to learn to write all over again.
The thing about the Internet is that you can write something... for a very narrow audience and make a living at it.
If it takes you seven years to write each novel, you need a patron. And I would rather have my corporate self as my patron than any arts council or bestower of grants.
I write, or used to write, to explain to myself situations I couldn't otherwise solve or understand. Meditation comes very naturally to me.
When I'm not writing, I do a lot of research reading on the shape of civilization. Fiction can be a lot of different things... but I feel like it's my job to write about the way things are.
In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics, the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats - maybe it's imperative that we encounter the defeats - but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be. Human beings are more alike than unalike.
We like to wait to a point where we have to get in there and write a record because we're just so built up.
I wrote a novel about an economic/environmental collapse titled 'Soft Apocalypse,' and that's definitely the sort I'm best prepared for. To write the novel, I did a lot of reading on what we might expect, so at the first sign, I'm ready to convert all of my assets to gold and ammo and stock up on freeze-dried food.
There were songs I would write about breaking up with somebody before I broke up with them, months and months before I broke up with them.
One of the best mental disciplines for people to implement is simply putting together a schedule or a task list and actually executing it. Write the list or the schedule the night before, and then do what you said you would do. Life becomes much better when you do that.
We write with the souls of thousands of lives saved, the lives of millions of jobs created, liberating multitudes of drivers from the shackles of servitude to iniquitous taxi cartels of corrupt cabals that choked cities with their pollution of air and morals.
There are some things that I write that I know are personal in a way, or the gag is so obscure that it's just for me, and there's other things that could basically be for anybody or be anything, at least until the lyrics start to get written.
I honestly think I could sit down and write a show tonight that the critics would love, and I know it would be canceled within four weeks. I know what the critics love. We write and produce for people, not for critics.
One of my main wishes in wanting to write about my mother was to explore the impact of her death on my life, explore our relationship, think about the different versions of myself that I was with and without her. I also had the really strong wish to bring her to life for my children, who were born after she was gone.
As a memoirist, I may claim to write the easier-to-remember things, but I could also just be writing to sweep them away. 'Don't bother me about my past,' I'll say, 'It's out in paperback now.'
I really liked the idea of creating a journal myself. It's like the way I clear my throat. I write a page every day, maybe 500 words. It could be about something I'm specifically worried about in the new novel; it could be a question I want answered; it could be something that's going on in my personal life. I just use it as an exercise.
I did a song in eight minutes. I thought everybody could write songs that fast. But working with a lot of them, they don't.
Stand-up is the only thing in which you actually write it, act it and direct it simultaneously, so it's actually a great theater exercise.
