I don't think it's good to say that you won't do certain things, but I don't necessarily have the natural urge to write.
When I was starting to write, the great influence was T.S. Eliot and after that William Butler Yeats.
I like the busy-ness of office life. What I discovered, to my surprise, is that I love the solitary nature of writing. What happens is that you write when you're ready.
I like to write from a slightly sad or complicated place. But with a sense of hope and happiness at the same time.
I love people, and I love to be with people and to make music with people, but my natural state is to revert back to being by myself in my house, which is cool because that's where I practice and write and listen and study.
I still care about human behavior and the art that it takes to write a good piece and to get a cast together who cares enough to put 150 percent of their talent into a project.
We must begin to make what I call 'conscious choices', and to really recognize that we are the same. It's from that place in my heart that I write my songs.
People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them I have the heart of a small boy... and I keep it in a jar on my desk.
When I first got back from the war, I said, 'I'm gonna write the Great American Novel about the Vietnam War.' So I sat down and wrote 1,700 pages of sheer psychotherapy drivel. It was first person, and there would be pages about wet socks and cold feet.
I do like to write but I also like to get and out and play. I am losing track of all the Cooper versions that I do - I have one for Iceland, different one over here.
Well, as a songwriter, it's really dangerous to use the word love in a song. It's a word that has been used in songs so many millions of times before, and it's the most popular topic to ever write about.
I'm a writer, so whatever gymnastics jump through my head, I write about it.
I write quite a lot of sonnets, and I think of them almost as prayers: short and memorable, something you can recite.
My wonderful editor, Jackie Onassis, asked me to write a book that I wanted to write. I said, 'Look, it's not going to be scandalized. I'm not going to talk about anybody like a dog. I'm going to say the positiveness of my life, and talk about those who have contributed to the way I've been going, and that's that.'
I sense a kind of fear of writing black or Asian characters from non-ethnic writers, who perhaps feel that they don't know the culture and therefore can't write about it. By and large, if there's an Asian character, I might get a call. But if the character is called 'Philip,' the chances are I won't.
Every time I write something down I check it to see if it has that telltale glow, the glow that tells me there's something there. If it glows, it stays. Everything is either on or off.
I grew up in New York and have lived here all my life. I think it's the best city in the world and can write about it with gusto and fervor and passion.
I write the poems first, with only a few exceptions for odd reasons, where I'm given the illustration first.
As you probably know, I've written a lot about the presidency, so it's obviously exciting when you get to interview a president and write about it.
I don't write about love because it makes for easy, passive heroes. I write about how love makes my characters more autonomous, more self-possessed, more opinionated and powerful. I write about characters who pursue relationships that make them the people they want to become. I write about love as a superpower.
I'm a Midwestern girl, born and bred. It's harder for some of us to write about things closer to home. It's not so much a fear of telling the truth but wanting to do it justice.
I found a certain kind of music congenial to me; it never occurred to me to write music that was academically acceptable.
I made a point when I made the Ugly Casanova record to not write a song and then say, 'This is a Modest Mouse song' or 'This is an Ugly Casanova song.' The people who were open to it not being a Modest Mouse record liked it.
I end up writing about all kinds of things. I never make an attempt to write about anything in particular. I don't have a little list of topics to write about.
There are these moments in the military where you're present at these enormous intersections of history and humanity. I came out of the end of that, and I just wanted to write. If you do it well, you know it will last. It can't get blown away like everything else.
Russian is such a tough and complex language that I am happy enough to understand everything and read most things pretty well, but, without constant practice, my speech is not what I wish it was, and I would sooner write in crayon than write a letter in Russian.
And over the last ten years, after my work with the Brodsky Quartet, I had the opportunity to write arrangements for chamber group, chamber orchestra, jazz orchestra, symphony orchestra even.
I don't really write for an audience. I just write what the subject seems to me to require.
To me many short poems read and write like beginnings that simply whet my appetite; I want to get over that.
I wish, naturally to prevent the possibility that someone may write an accidental, superficial, incomplete and perhaps untrue picture of me.
If you're sitting in a place like Martha's Vineyard, I don't think you're going to write a song about a ski resort.
I wanted to write some lyrics that had some meaning to them, lyrics that were meaningful to me and hopefully people can take something from that.
I am inspired just by the way a scene can be interpreted by the actors. It can make a huge difference on the type of music that you write. It's best for me if I don't work at all on a project until the movie is shot and I have some sort of edit in front of me.
You do it a day at a time. You write as well as you can, you put it in the mail, you leave it under submission, you never leave it at home.
I wrote my first song when I was six or seven, a silly little song. But I used to write poems in high school - not songs.
I was motivated to write about violence because I believe it's not unusual. I see it as just a part of life, and I think we get in trouble when we separate people who've experienced it from those who haven't.
