I don't want to think that anything is off limits for me to write about, but I also don't want to intrude on anybody's life, which is why there's very little specificity or names in the songs I write.
Chicago is many things to many people, and to me, it is a place where you can write.
The more you write tunes, the better they will become. The more you do gigs, the better you will become.
And if you're horrible to me I'm going to write a song about you and you are not going to like it. That's how I operate.
So many people had been asking me to write an autobiography, or threatening to write my biography without any input from me, that I thought I'd better tell my story before other people told it for me.
The process of getting conscious, for me, was a very, very uncomfortable, disturbing, and sometimes physically painful process. And so that's the standard to which I write, because it was what I've experienced over my time.
I had to go into a studio and compose and write and press up 12 songs in 14 hours. When you're recording a song from scratch it takes you 14 hours to do just one song.
My dream of dreams is to write Broadway musicals. All of this Twitter and TV writing is just a day job.
I didn't know I was going to write for TV until I was suddenly writing for TV, so that kind of stuff can bewilder you.
I write at a pace that suits me, and sometimes it's two books a year, but most often it's one.
If to live is to progress, if you are lucky, from foolishness to wisdom, then to write novels is to broadcast the various stages of your foolishness.
We are going from reading our genetic code to the ability to write it. That gives us the hypothetical ability to do things never contemplated before.
The horrible truth is that I am lazy and I am going to write and do bits that just hand themselves to me.
Now I don't really write for adults or kids - I don't write for kids, I write about them. I think you need to do that, otherwise you end up preaching down.
I don't write women who are weak or simpering.
As Faulkner says, all of us have the capacity in us for great good and for great evil, for love but also for hate. I wanted to write those kinds of complex character in a fantasy, and not just have all the good people get together to fight the bad guy.
I could, of course, have written about the film world and the jealousy there and the frequent belief that others don't have talent. But, for some reason, it just struck me to write about art.
I write in longhand on yellow legal pads.
There should be a law that no ordinary newspaper should be allowed to write about art. The harm they do by their foolish and random writing it would be impossible to overestimate - not to the artist, but to the public, blinding them to all but harming the artist not at all.
You can write 'little beast' if you want, but my name is David Ferrer.
I've always found the second book in a series is the hardest to write.
It was the part of Gambian culture where they give each other advice a lot, how they're always comparing things in order to get a message across... that really influenced the way I write.
I would say just start writing. You've got to write every day. Copy someone that you like if you think that perhaps could become your sound, too. I did that with Hemingway, and I thought I was writing just like Hemingway. Then all of a sudden it occurred to me - he didn't have a sense of humor. I don't know anything he's written that's funny.
I don't write as much now as I used to, but I write. The lines still come, maybe periodically, and I'll go through these little bursts of time where I write a lot of things then a long period of time where maybe I don't write anything.
There's a higher place that I have no illusions about reaching. There's a sophistication and aesthetic about composers who only write only for the music's sake.
It's even easier to write about the past now that I'm happy and have better stuff to write about. That's why someone like Bob Dylan can make so many records over so long a time; it's not like he's been sad all this time. He's really successful!
Moving to New York made all the difference in my creating this new series with Ellie Hatcher. I love Portland, and it's always going to be one of my favorite cities, but it was getting to the point where, after I'd moved to New York, I couldn't write as specifically about Portland any more.
I believe all stories are love stories, and there are kinds and kinds of love, so I will always write about love, but not necessarily romance.
I finished 'America America,' and I knew I had to write another book, not just for personal reasons but because I had a contract.
I only take causes or write about things that I am passionate about, and I do it with a certain flair and a sort of wink and a nod.
I learned to write from different points of view and not just something I would say.
I think that if you write what you love to read, that will be what your audience wants to read, too.
I've never written nearly as much about place as people seem to think I do. I just write about class.
I read John Irving's novel 'The World According To Garp' when I was about 14 or 15. It was the first grown-up book that I had read. It is the story of a young man who grows up to be a novelist. I finished it, and I wanted to write a book that made the reader feel the way I felt at the end of that, which was sort of both bereft and elated.
I think writing really helps you heal yourself. I think if you write long enough, you will be a healthy person. That is, if you write what you need to write, as opposed to what will make money, or what will make fame.
Looking back, I see that I write books about brothers and sisters, about what makes up a family, what works and what is nurturing.
