Writing is a very intimate thing, especially when you write lyrics and sing them in front of someone for the first time. It's like a really embarrassing situation. To me, singing is almost like crying, and you have to really know someone before you can start crying in front of them.
I will always, forever, write songs, and wherever they're meant to be is where they'll be.
I always write stories, and I write poems, too. I just never sell them to anybody, but I write them. They're good, too. They never leave the house. They're too disclosing.
I write first drafts by hand, often out of the house somewhere, and then, when I've got a draft, type it up and let it sit, sometimes for a long time, and then when I'm ready, I work on revision.
The whole business of reading English Literature in two years, to know it in any reputable sense of the word - let alone your learning to write English - is, in short, impossible.
Through language, we can tell the truth and hear the truth spoken, just as we can be deceived. Sometimes it's a painful realization: we can be lied to. As I write, I think of myself as putting my eye under oath, so that what I write is the truth about my characters.
For every person who passes on the opportunity to write Spider-Man or Superman, I guarantee there are 5000 hungry writers who would give their eye-teeth to do it. But just because they want to do it, it doesn't mean they are capable of doing it.
All I ever wanted to do was write songs, and I just dreamed of putting out an album and having a single that maybe did alright.
I knew that you couldn't make a living simply writing about the outdoors, so I made an effort from the beginning of my freelance career to write about other subjects.
My motivations are thinking I can write better songs, that the concerts can be better.
Part of making art is learning how you make it best. I'm not great at sitting down at a desk and writing for three hours. I write best verbally, talking through an idea with people, so I do my best work when I collaborate.
I think that you don't really want to write a book that doesn't really move people and doesn't get them to think.
When I write, I put one foot in front of the other. It's an act of faith. I just follow my heart.
Because I find writing painful, I try to get it over with as fast as possible. But I write every day, or I lose the thread.
I like to control my films from beginning to end, to write them the way I want.
When I started to write culinary mysteries, I did it because nobody was doing it anymore.
My dream in life is to write the one gag that makes everyone in the world laugh.
They are just really stupid people in Hollywood. You write them a script, and they say they love it, they absolutely love it. Then they say, 'But doesn't it need a small dog, and an Eskimo, and shouldn't it be set in New Guinea?' And you say, 'But it is a sophisticated romantic comedy set in Paris.'
When I was collecting material for a political gossip column, and someone said something interesting, I would wait for them to add, 'and I don't want to read that in your magazine!' In which case I wouldn't use it. But if they didn't remember to say it, I'd nip off to the loo, write the story up, come back and change the subject.
I had to write about realistic circumstances. That's the way my brain works. And I think that gave me a sort of place in the field.
To write a book about improvisation is partly a contradiction in terms. Improvisation is spontaneous. It's in the moment.
My main object is to write, to keep learning. I always try to perfect my composition. But I do like writing film and opera music. I believe that it fulfills the needs of particular situations.
I'm like a bad musical cliche because I bring my guitar on the road and try to write songs in hotel rooms.
When I learnt to write I became my own master, I became very strong, and that strength is with me to this very day.
I try to write about real women, real people - in other words flawed characters.
I had a one-year-old son. How will my failure or success limit what he becomes? I was trying to write screenplays. It doesn't pay very well until you sell one. I was poor.
Write a million words before thinking about getting published.
I've written for 'The Times' because they have valued what I do enough to pay me. The 'New Statesman' magazine also asked me to write an article, but they didn't want to pay me anything. To me, that shows how much they value quality journalism.
I never thought it was unusual to write, and I've been writing or pretending to write since before I even started school.
The hardest thing in the world is to write something critical about someone and then show up the next day in the locker room. I mean, that is not fun, and that takes an awful lot of guts. And I never enjoyed that.
I only write in blue ink.
I think I'm writing for an intelligent stranger - you know, in my mind I can't remember who coined that phrase first. I don't want to write anything that makes me cringe, first of all. I cringe a lot - mostly when I hear popular music.
We have to create a range, and we have to let there be possibilities. And basically, by showing there are different types of people, you write down the monolith. You stop having to represent for all black people when you allow there to be different types represented.
As a teenager I read a lot of books. Books with lots of scary trends, things like nuclear weapons and overpopulation and global diseases, and I thought, 'Wouldn't it be great to write stories that showed people these problems and that we could do something about them.'
No I don't really write thinking about specific actors because it can get in the way a little bit.
One shouldn't write one's own epitaph. I hope people will remember me as one who did her best - and who wasn't an anachronism.
