I can't write about your pain; I only know my own.
I discovered that, in order to write a magnificent piece, you should shoot the images because once you are filming, you are writing the script in your mind.
Happy songs are very difficult to write. How many truly great upbeat songs are there?
Starbucks is the last public space with chairs. It's a shower for homeless people. And it's a place you can write all day. The baristas don't glare at you. They don't even look at you.
I imagine a child. That child is me. I can reconstruct and vividly remember portions of my own childhood. I can see, taste, smell, feel, and hear them. Then what I do is, not write about that kid or about his world, but start to think of a book that would have pleased him.
Truly I never thought of myself as writing legal thrillers, and I still don't think I do. I write stories about women.
I don't write the kind of 'happily ever after' that romance readers enjoy.
It is not fun singing about losing somebody like that, but at the same time it was easy to write because the memories were so real and vivid and so much a part of who I am.
I write tragedies and things when I'm alone. Chekhovian dramas.
I wouldn't totally rule out doing Letterman or the Tonight Show if I had a set that I just happened to write that I thought was funny but was still appropriate for network censors. But I'm not going to go out of my way.
Where was Paris Hilton a year ago? She's a fabulous character to write about.
Bernard Shaw said that when you copy yourself, you know you've got style. And I feel that if you can write like you write, then you are true to yourself. And it's not an easy thing to do - it's a disgustingly difficult thing to do.
I write synopses after the book is completed. I can't write it beforehand, because I don't know what the book's about. I invent something for my publisher because he asks for one, but the final book ends up very differently.
The summer of 1991, I took $2,000 of my savings and a desktop program, and I asked my friends to write 800 words about something they cared about. I got eight or nine articles and put them together. It was no frills, black and white, no graphics. I printed them out and just dumped piles around D.C.
I always say it took me 10 minutes to write 'Cars,' but if I am honest it could have been even less than that - and it has been a really successful song over the years. It is still massively used, in advertising, in films, and people do cover versions of it a lot.
I write the story that nobody reads. Someday, I'm going to write it in German to see if anyone notices.
It is like therapy to write and have people connect with it. That's the kind of music I connect with most.
In America the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion; within these barriers an author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them.
You can try to reach an audience, but you just write what comes out of you and you just hope that it is accepted. You do not write specifically to a generation.
If you know somebody is going to be awfully annoyed by something you write, that's obviously very satisfying, and if they howl with rage or cry, that's honey.
The Twist was a guided missile launched from the ghetto into the heart of suburbia. The Twist succeeded, as politics, religion and law could never do, in writing in the heart and soul what the Supreme Court could only write on the books.
People buy pads all the time, because they want to write stuff down. We're never going to get away from paper, ever. People like writing; that's why more people are writing more real thank-you notes now - not just to stand out, but because there's something about pen to paper, about holding something cool in your hands.
I write everything down. I e-mail the second I think of something, or I write notes in my BlackBerry calendar. I set up reminder alerts on my phone. And I have a notebook by my bedside so I can write down any last-minute ideas.
I love being a writer-director. I couldn't imagine directing without writing it. You have to write and tell your stories - that's what directing is to me.
I used to tell my writing students that they must write the books they wished they could come upon - because then the books they hungered and thirsted for would exist.
When I went on to write my next book, Working With Emotional Intelligence, I wanted to make a business case that the best performers were those people strong in these skills.
Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable.
Writers like to write, and writing in different forms - short, long, bite-sized, done on the fly, done with painstaking attention - all interest me.
What we call politics now and what most political writers write about is the empathy and the bonding and the word choice and the horse rights, and it has nothing to do with what's really happening to people's lives.
I did not end up as broadly educated as my Cambridge colleagues, but I graduated probably better equipped to write a book on my chosen subject.
When I'm in a songwriting phase, it's a phase. I don't just suddenly feel inspired and then write a song, because I always write with a co-writer.
I don't know where I would place myself in the literary landscape. I really just write the book that I would want to read. And I put on the blinders, and I really - it is, for me, that simple.
If you write chick lit, and if you're a New Yorker, and if your book becomes the topic of pop-culture fascination, the paper might make dismissive and ignorant mention of your book. If you write romance, forget about it. You'll be lucky if they spell your name right on the bestseller list.
I always wrote - not about war, necessarily, but I always wrote stories. I tried to write while I was in Iraq. It's not really - I didn't do a very good job, and not about war.
I try to write in the mornings, as soon as I'm up and caffeinated, and to stay in the chair as long as I can be productive.
If the breaking news event has something to do with young people, specifically with MTV's audience, there was a higher chance that I would actually go cover it with a television camera instead of just write the story myself and read it on the air.
