One of my big goals as a human being is to continue to write what's really happening to me, even if it's a tough pill to swallow for people around me... I do fear that if I ever were to have someone in my life who mattered, I would second-guess every one of my lyrics.
I'm pretty social so it's hard for me to find solitude, but I need to have solitude to write.
I've written only two novels, but they're both long ones, and they each took a decade to write.
When I read it, I don't wince, which is all I ever ask for a book I write.
Many writers tend to write summing-up books at the end of their lives.
I also helped write the five-page statement of principles that Civic Forum issued in late November. That was the first public expression of what the new government wanted to do.
I write in all sorts of places; it's a legacy of my time as a journalist, where I could turn out copy in a hotel corridor. But I have a little office that I rent in my local town, and that's my ideal place.
I write my lyrics into the computer and I hum my music into the dictaphone.
I try to write down every song that comes to me, even though I know that every song that comes to me isn't a song that I need to sing.
Actually, if I could deliberately sit down and write a pop hit, all my songs would be pop hits! Let's put it this way. I play what I like to hear. And sometimes I like to hear something poppy, and sometimes I don't.
I wanted to write about the moment when your addictions no longer hide the truth from you. When your whole life breaks down. That's the moment when you have to somehow choose what your life is going to be about.
I can write a program that lets you break the copy protection on a music file. But I can't write a program that solders new connections onto a chip for you.
I sing songs that I have lived or I write them because I have lived them. I think the believability factor is key.
I write in the afternoon, from about 12 until 6 or 7. I use an upstairs room as my office. Once I get going I keep at it, and it usually takes about six months from the first blank screen until 'The End.'
Nature, not content with denying him the ability to think, has endowed him with the ability to write.
Never write on a subject until you have read yourself full of it.
Write for yourself, not for a perceived audience. If you do, you'll mostly fall flat on your face, because it's impossible to judge what people want. And you have to read. That's how you learn what is good writing and what is bad. Then the main thing is application. It's hard work.
There are pretty girls all over the place. But there are still a lot of people standing strong, doing their thing in loving relationships, actually staying true. I wanted to write an honest love song from that point of view.
In Japan, more than in any other country I've ever been in, one is not supposed to write about the people in the glass bubble; that is why they are in the glass bubble.
Very few people possess true artistic ability. It is therefore both unseemly and unproductive to irritate the situation by making an effort. If you have a burning, restless urge to write or paint, simply eat something sweet and the feeling will pass.
As a singer-songwriter, a solo artist with a guitar, I can only write so many weepie little bedroom songs.
Smokey Robinson writes the heartfelt songs, whereas it was my job to write the songs about weakness and failure in love.
I write plays instinctively. I don't like writing movie scripts.
In America, at the beginning of talkies, they pulled Fred Astaire from the theaters and put him on the screen and had all of these great composers write songs for him. They call it the Great American Songbook; I call it the Fred Astaire Songbook because they were written for him.
I really - I don't take my work that seriously, and I think that's what keeps me loose. If I try to write, if I catch myself trying to write, I'll fall right on my face. I'll see it. If I see in the prose that I'm - 'Boy, look at me writing,' I rewrite it. I rewrite it because I don't, because I think it's distracting.
I write, but I also act.
But I can't and don't ever want to write bell-yanking confetti-tossing hat-throwing poems.
I would always get a lot of work as a writer, but that wasn't what I wanted to be. For me, I was only doing half of what I really wanted to do - write and direct.
I thought at 46 years old, I've been removed from the fashion industry for 10 years. I couldn't possibly write a model's book. That's for a 20-year-old. But I could say what I want to say without chastising the industry.
Writers - all writers, even screenwriters - like to make their mark. I don't think many screenwriters can write. They pass as writers.
The big problem with songwriting for me is starting a new song. It's the thing where all the anguish exists, not in the writing of the song, but the starting of the new song. What do I write about? I never know.
Well, writing was what I wanted to do, it was always what I wanted to do. I had novels to write so I wrote them.
Then they started pulling me in and I was very resistant. All the other actors would be saying write more, more dialogue for me, and I'd always be saying 'No, less, less'.
I do not just write, I write what I am. If there is a secret, perhaps that is it.
Good education means learning to read, write and most importantly learn how to learn so that you can be whatever you want to be when you grow up.
Talent is a matter of quantity. Talent does not write on page, it writes three hundred.
