My background is on the stage, so when I'd write movies, they'd be a lot like plays.
Colleges and universities, for all the benefits they bring, accomplish far less for their students than they should. Many students graduate without being able to write well enough to satisfy their employers... reason clearly or perform competently in analyzing complex, non-technical problems.
I simply don't understand authors that know everything before they write it; it seems so cold blooded. I think it's lovely when the story takes over and goes somewhere else.
Probably every book I read influenced me in some small way. Authors like Jan Westcott, Kathleen Winsor, Catherine Cookson, Georgette Heyer, and even Barbara Cartland taught me to write character-driven stories.
I do say all I've ever written about is being alone. And most people take that as, 'Oh, that's so sad.' And I always say, 'No. No, all I ever write about is being alone, and sometimes that's a beautiful, beautiful thing.'
I really enjoy doing both, but I didn't write nonfiction until 1994.
I used to believe that if I could do certain things - write a book or be a successful musician - that I'd be transformed into a happy person, but it doesn't work that way.
I need complete silence when I write.
It doubles your perception, to write from the point of view of someone you're not.
Although, my experience when I've been depressed, not only am I too depressed to sit down and write a song, I'm too depressed to pick up my feet. So if you can at least write about it, you're halfway away from it.
In the back of my mind was the constant hankering, almost yearning, to write but something always stopped me in my tracks. Or if I did find my way to put a pen to paper or finger on a keyboard I'd give up after a few minutes. I'd find other things to do: Anything but writing.
I feel it most in my work, because there aren't roles about women who are spiritually evolving. That anyone would even write something like that, something that's worth doing, would be a miracle!
I'm working on my music a lot, like folk singing, guitar. It's sort of rocky, folky, alty, angsty. I'm putting a lot of energy into that. I write pretty much all the time.
Mary, my little girl, was confirmed in a Buddhist temple. She saw the Life write up on Buddhism, with pictures of the ceremony, and she said she wanted to be confirmed there because she only liked Jesus as a kid. She was a little disappointed in him when he grew up.
Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.
I think I have a hard time expressing myself in my relationships. I use songs to tell people how I'm feeling. If I can't say 'I love you,' I'll write a song about it and hope that the person figures it out.
I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do ever - was write novels.
We all love to sing, and when we sit down to write a song I think it kind of shows itself to us.
Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.
I'm an author who likes assignments, who needs suggestions, ideas I would never have thought of otherwise - then something happens inside my alien head. Other people have to decide whether or not I'm a good writer, but I do have the ability to write in different styles.
The music is the main thing and it's just as easy to write acceptable words.
Recipe writers hate to write about heat. They despise it. Because there aren't proper words for communicating what should be done with it.
I always have a story in my head that needs to be written, or at least I think I do. But I usually can't find the time to write it.
That was one of the big problems when I was at Harvard studying music. We had to write choral pieces in the style of Brahms or Mendelssohn, which was distressing because in the end you realized how good Brahms is, and how bad you are.
If what you know and what you love are the same thing, that's great. But if not, write what you love. I love history, secrets, conspiracies, action, adventure, international settings.
I think that in order to get better as an athlete and to see whatever kind of results you're after, you have to make goals. Whether you write them down or tell someone about them, it's important to set goals for yourself in order to achieve any kind of success.
But then of course you reach a point where you have to say, I've got to figure out how this book's going to end. Otherwise, you're going to write yourself into so many dead-ends.
There is perhaps no more obvious vanity than to write of it so vainly.
Reason why we've lasted so long is we write music; we get very intense. We go away from each other, do our own thing, and then we get back together.
I write to keep from going mad from the contradictions I find among mankind - and to work some of those contradictions out for myself.
The secret is to write just anything, to dare to write just anything, because when you write just anything, you begin to say what is important.
We don't want to create a literary ghetto in which black writers are only allowed to write black characters and women writers are put on 'girl books.'
In 'Out of the Dark,' I'm talking about my own life. I'm not talking as a character or speaking as a character. I was not as free as when I write fiction.
I write novels because there is something I don't understand in reality.
I'm not saying I'm a writer, but I've been in movies for a long time, and I think I could write a script for a movie.
The men I write can be intense, quiet, outspoken and outrageous, deadly or fun... but I would never waste time on a hero who wasn't honorable, who didn't protect those who couldn't protect themselves, who didn't value children and pets, who wasn't independent and unselfish.
