I had written for the theater and didn't know that I knew how to write for film. Ultimately, I think it's just trusting your voice, trusting your characters, and then telling them in a different medium.
I'm not one of those who can listen to music and write. I need the door closed. Windows shut. Facing the wall. No birds tweeting, views of nature, and so forth.
We write because we believe the human spirit cannot be tamed and should not be trained.
For most of my writing life, I've refused to allow myself to believe that writing was a significant form of action. I always felt very uneasy about the fact that all I did was write in a situation as desperate as apartheid South Africa. Whether I was correct or not is a different issue.
I'm aware of the mystery around us, so I write about coincidences, premonitions, emotions, dreams, the power of nature, magic.
But when you get to a song, not only do you have to do a vocal melody, you have to write words and not be redundant and make some semblance of a story.
I've had those people very interested in my writing. Since I think of myself as a composer, I feel really good. I've had lots of guys call me up. I've gotten two or three commissions to write things. I've written lots of movie scores.
When I got laid off, I would write my friends these 15-page-long emails. This was before people had personal emails, and my friends would tell me that I was going to get them fired if I kept sending them stuff, so I started a website.
His struggle for a bare living left him no time to take advantage of the public evening school. In time he learned to read, to follow a conversation or lecture; but he never learned to write correctly; and his pronunciation remains extremely foreign to this day.
Then somebody suggested I should write about the war, and I said I didn't know anything about the war. I did not understand anything about it. I didn't see how I could write it.
Writers write to influence their readers, their preachers, their auditors, but always, at bottom, to be more themselves.
My son had toyed with the idea of writing and trying to write a little bit, so that kind of gave me the bug to write also.
I write about my life and my own experience, but I also write about things that I have no knowledge of whatsoever.
I received a grant from The Ford Foundation to write a book for kids about urban perception, or how people experience cities, but I kept putting off writing it. Instead I started to write what became The Phantom Tollbooth.
Often, I write to feel better and to heal - to cope with things that I'm dealing with. I'm either writing to get out of a feeling or to get into the feeling, to feel it more. Usually it's the perfect remedy, but if it isn't, I focus on other parts of what I'm making that don't involve writing. If neither are working, I simply forfeit the day.
I don't mind if what they write about me has some truth in it. Pure imagination makes me feel sad about the whole thing.
I agree that there are some bad apples on Wall Street. I spent about ten years exposing corporate and financial fraud for 'Barron's' magazine and I found a lot to write about.
If you write a movie for Roger Corman, it's going to get made. You saw it almost the next day.
I write a lot, and very often I write a couple of lines that are particularly revealing in some kind of way. And then as a few more lines get added and a piece gets added, eventually the song pretty much takes over and you can't really find a way to change those things.
Normally when we go in and write the songs we write, we think about doing a cover, but never a covers record. That would be, for us, a concept. We don't want to have a concept!
You can't plan to write a great song. It just happens to you. It drops in your lap. It's the same thing with a woman.
Don't write so that you can be understood, write so that you can't be misunderstood.
I am an incurable romantic. I am even in love with the idea of being in love, and hence, I write a lot of love songs.
I'm not a food critic, and I'm not really an authority to write anything on food.
When I was as little as four years old, my mom would give me a pen and paper and tell me to write a story to keep me busy.
Whether I'm writing for myself or someone else, I'll always write a song that I would feel comfortable singing.
Chopin, Schubert, and Liszt had no idea of how to write for the piano.
And you find as a writer there are certain spots on the planet where you write better than others, and I believe in that. And New Orleans is one of them.
I don't believe for one moment you can write well what you wouldn't read for pleasure.
You write with ease to show your breeding, but easy writing's curst hard reading.
I write with a sort of grim determination to deal with things that are hidden and difficult, and this means, I think, that pleasure is out of the question. I would associate this with narcissism anyway, and I would disapprove of it.
Ordering a man to write a poem is like commanding a pregnant woman to give birth to a red-headed child.
Write a page a day. It will add up.
I wanted to write something from a child's viewpoint... Five of the characters I have played in movies have either been abused or became abusers, themselves, and I just kind of felt like there was a need.
The old sergeant from headquarters treats me like a son and takes the greatest pride in whatever I do or write. He regularly assigns me now to certain doors, and I always obey orders like the little gentleman that I am.
I never set out to write songs about the world around me... it just kind of came about as a result of paying more attention to things.
