While writing, I'm always so happy in the middle of a book or finishing a book and really hate starting them, so I often think, 'I wish I had a really big book to write to which I could devote seven years of my life.'
The act of writing is a kind of catharsis, a liberation, but I never really concerned myself with that. I write because it interests me.
The starting point of discovering who you are, your gifts, your talents, your dreams, is being comfortable with yourself. Spend time alone. Write in a journal. Take long walks in the woods.
I tell people the first time I decided to write a novel I was in my mid-20s, and it was, 'Well, it's time to see if I can do this.' I basically flipped a coin to see if I was going to write science fiction or if I was going to do a crime novel. The coin toss went to science fiction.
I always write in pencil, so I can erase.
My best moments are when I write songs out of nowhere.
When you write, it's making a certain kind of music in your head. There's a rhythm to it, a pulse, and on the whole, I'm writing to that drum rather than the psychological process.
Not to sound egomaniac or anything, but just to get under people's skin like that, and for them to believe in you and believe strongly enough to write... it's flattering and it helps you during the day.
I know how to write a movie. I know how to direct a movie.
And when I was young, my family was perfectly nice. I write a lot about it, as you noticed. But it was rather limited. I think, I don't think anyone in my family would really feel I'd done them an injustice by saying that. We didn't see many people. There were many books. It was as if I wanted to get away from home.
I'm very interested, for instance, in music in education - getting young people not only to listen to, but participate in the music that I write. I consider this one of the most vital aspects of my work.
It's always hard to write and get your words out there, to find an editor, a publisher - readers! - who are going to appreciate them.
After this, I took private lessons in Italian from an elementary school teacher. He gave me themes to write about, and some of them turned out so well that he told me to publish them in a newspaper.
I dream about singing. I would love to sing and write.
In the back of your mind, when you say you want to write music for the movies, you're saying that you want a big house, a big car and a boat. If you just wanted to write music, you could live in Kansas and do it.
The great thing about the animation process is that is goes from, I write the lines, it goes to the actors, the actors bring a whole world to that, they bring the characters to life, then it goes to the animators, then it goes to the editor who cuts it together, and then you screen it and it goes back through the system again.
White writers in many cases choose not to populate their fiction with people of color. A lot of what I'm doing is trying to write against that, not about race but against the avoidance of race that's such a dominant model in white literary discourse.
When I write now I do not invent situation, characters, or actions, but rather structures and discursive forms, textual groupings which are combined according to secret affinities among themselves, as in architecture or the plastic arts.
Never advise anyone to go to war or to get married. Write down the advice of him who loves you, though you like it not at present. He that has no children brings them up well.
My inner critic who had begun piping up about how hopeless I was and how I didn't know to write.
Anything that I write comes from the soul.
Money is a huge issue for manic depressives. Sometimes the problem is not nearly on the same scale as it has been for me, but nonetheless, it's difficult to deal with. Many get themselves into debt that can take years to clear up, write bad cheques, shoplift and borrow huge amounts from family and friends.
I never write from concept. The beat is the beginning, and then I fill in the rest of the song into what it should be.
I have strengths, and I have weaknesses. I don't pretend to be able to write a great thesis or doctorate - I have no pretensions in that direction.
I don't write romance novels.
Whatever you want to do in the industry, do it on the smallest level at first. If you want to be a writer, write a screenplay in your house. If you want to be an actor, put on a one-man show. If you want to be a stand-up comedian, go to an open mic.
Musically, I wear many hats. I'm the social media director. I conceptualise the videos, write the songs, do the press. I'm not a major label act.
I don't listen to what people say about me and I don't read what they write about me. People can compare me to anyone they want to, but I'm not going to worry about it.
It's like I'm thin skinned, I guess, but I thought I could never write about my youth for the longest time. It took getting to my forties before I could even look back on it.
Life is denied by lack of attention, whether it be to cleaning windows or trying to write a masterpiece.
It took me 40 years to write my first book. When I was a child, I was encouraged to go to school. I was not encouraged to follow the career of a writer because my parents thought that I was going to starve to death.
Find enough clever things to say, and you're a Prime Minister; write them down and you're a Shakespeare.
I write about the American dream: if you set your mind to do something, you can do it. My fans know they're getting the real thing.
I made the mistake of writing something very, very short about Obama for this website that I write fiction for, and my father told me never do that again. And he was right. I have nothing to add to a political conversation because it's not my area.
I've written a lot of really good books. Now we'll see if I can write any more good books. I mean there's a chance I won't, but I'm going to try.
I know if I were to drop dead now, people would probably write nice things in the obit.
