My gut feeling about sequels is that they should be premeditated: You should try to write a trilogy first or at least sketch out a trilogy if you have any faith in your film.
I love song writing, so I'm always happy to write for other musicians.
In every novel, I write about something - a place, an experience, an emotion - with which I'm intimately familiar, but it's also crucial to me that I take on challenges. If write only inside my comfort zone, I'll suffocate.
I stay way from that area, and there's only so many songs you can write about love, sex and death.
I fell in love with singing, and through singing, I learned how to write songs. Anything you're consistent with and that you do all the time, you're gonna reap benefits off it at one point. You're not gonna get worse!
You don't write a book to show off.
I'm not a very spiritual guy when it comes to music. I remember hearing Carlos Santana say that angels helped him write his songs. And I thought, 'Really, angels?'
Don't romanticise your 'vocation.' You can either write good sentences or you can't. There is no 'writer's lifestyle.' All that matters is what you leave on the page.
The fact that we write about it doesn't mean we play better than ordinary players at all.
I deliberately decided to write a kind of guide to leather bars for straight people, for people not into leather, so that people could see what it was all about.
The idea that I'm going to have to sit down to write some fiction where I'm going to have to think of a plot would really scare me, because it would come out a mess.
I consider myself to be first and foremost a comic writer. The way I entertain myself - especially in those long and grim hours in the office - is to write stuff I find funny.
I wrote 'Snowy' as a result of spending a week on a narrow boat with daily classes of children, helping them to write about canal life, the work of barges, the simple pleasure of watching the water creatures. There was no doubt that the star of their week was Snowy, the working barge horse who pulled us daily along the towpath.
I have a really hard time writing my own lyrics for this record, because one, I had to write so many and also I was kind of perplexed by the idea of how I was going to sing and play... because at that time, we hadn't really thought about asking someone else.
We are saved by grace, not by the works of the law. But don't be so quick to write the law off.
I write the novels that are possible for me to write, not that ones I think will come across in a certain light.
There's a story everywhere. Being bored to death someplace is basically a funny proposition. What you have to watch out for is you don't write a boring story about a boring place.
I never thought of having platinum albums and winning awards. I just wanted to write songs and sing when I started out in the music business.
You want the book to be special, and they are not always going to be special, but at least you want that to be the ambition. So the only way that happens is if you are not pressing to write a book.
I've seen some great write ups and I emailed her the other night because I saw her on an awards show recently.
There are three difficulties in authorship: to write anything worth publishing, to find honest men to publish it, and to find sensible men to read it.
I once tried to write a novel about revenge. It's the only book I didn't finish. I couldn't get into the mind of the person who was plotting vengeance.
I believe that it is my job not only to write books but to have them published. A book is like a child. You have to defend the life of a child.
The hack songwriter will write the absolute truth every single word, whether it makes a great song or not.
I can't understand these chaps who go round American universities explaining how they write poems: It's like going round explaining how you sleep with your wife.
When I realized I could write lyrics and let someone that I knew listen to them, but not know that the song was about them - say it was a girl. I could write this song about how I feel about this girl, I could play it to them. I just loved it, because all of the words would speak to them. I could see them slowly falling in love with me.
However long the song is was how long it took us to write it.
When I started writing a business column 15 years ago, I knew I'd found the perfect job for myself. As a columnist I could pick my own topic, do my own analysis, say what I wanted to say and attribute it to myself. Best of all, I could write in my own voice.
I relate to what Gov. Romney brings. I know what it means to balance a budget. I know what it means to write a paycheck and not only cash one. I know what it means to create a job, and I know what it means to struggle with my business every day in terms of keeping our doors open any day but definitely in a difficult economy.
I consider plot a necessary intrusion on what I really want to do, which is write snappy dialogue.
A good journalist is not the one that writes what people say, but the one that writes what he is supposed to write.
I think the sport of wrestling, which I became involved with at the age of 14... I competed until I was 34, kind of old for a contact sport. I coached the sport until I was 47. I think the discipline of wrestling has given me the discipline I have to write.
I wanted to write in film or something like that. I thought acting was an embarrassing thing to say you wanted to do, especially when you're young. It seemed really uncool.
The part of my writing I find the most rewarding is when people write to me or speak to me in public to tell me how his or her life has been changed by my books.
I think every band is a little cautious when the drummer starts to write tunes.
But long story short, I didn't start doing stand-up because I wanted to have a TV show or be an actor or even wanted to write sketch comedy. I got into stand-up because I love stand-up.
