If you write interesting roles, you get interesting people to play them. If you write roles that are full of nuance and contradiction and have interesting dialog, actors are drawn to that.
I'm totally convinced I can write the perfect pop song.
Only Agatha Christie can write like Agatha Christie.
I only want to write books and movies about women.
If you're writing a book that takes place in New York in the moment, you can't not write about 9-11; you can't not integrate it. My main character's view is the Statue of Liberty and the Trade Center. It doesn't have to take over, but it has to be acknowledged.
I'd like to actually work with a lot of other people, and whether it's someone who is completely unknown who I love and think is a talent, maybe I'll work with them, or, like, maybe I'll work with some of the biggest pop stars and write music for them.
Acting is about animality. It's great to be allowed to be animal. But I feel more alive as a director. Every morning, I have to write.
It's one thing you aspire to: someday, you'll be able to write a book.
America gave me the opportunity to open successful restaurants, start a TV show, and write books. I can even fill an auditorium when I give a speech, which in America is rare for a chef.
Writing fiction, there are no limits to what you write as long as it increases the value of the paper you are writing on.
I love to write. I love it. I mean there's nothin in the world I like better, and that includes sex, probably because I'm so very bad at it.
Maybe I should write 'Tiger Who?' on my cap.
As a result of my life on the road and the increasing number of rainy afternoons in cinemas, I began to get the idea that I might write a film.
John Wells let me write a couple of West Wings, which was an incredible gift. I loved it once I got past the brain injury part of it, and so I'm working on a couple of things that are far from fruition, but what I want to pursue.
I wanted to write when I was young, but people said it was impossible. Then my parents locked me in a mental institution - they said I was crazy and would never make a living from writing.
Well, in fact everybody - everybody - in the entire nation has enough stuff in their life to write about that's interesting that they could write their autobiography. And in the end that's why I find people interesting.
I write scripts in storyboard fashion using stick figures, and thought balloons and word balloons and captions. Then I'll write descriptions of what scenes should look like and turn it over to the artist.
I might be writing what people expect me to write, writing from that place where I might be ruled by economic considerations. To overcome that, I started working with my dreams, because I'm not so censored when I use dream material.
Growing up, all I did was write about the fact that I'm from where I'm from. I was a big champion of where I was from and Wisconsin in general, and the Midwest.
I don't write genre stuff in any form. I'm not interested in it. I always try to do the opposite of that.
A lot of things that should not be written were written without checking with me, things that were not in good taste. That hurt me. That is why I stopped talking to the press. Because they didn't want to ask me. They just wanted to write what they felt like.
I basically had the idea when I was 18 that I wanted to write my own songs. I knew it was going to be a long, tough road, and I was like, if I just begin now, by the time I'm 40, I'll be good at it.
It's often wrong to write for specific actors because one ends up using what is least interesting about them, their mannerisms and habits. I prefer not to write for specific people.
I write a lot too, so I would like to write or direct in the future if I can.
I write to make sense of things that don't make sense to me.
Female artists are the perfect example of a creator: They know how to make life and art with their bodies. Life comes from their bodies, so on a very basic level, they have more to write about.
I like to write about the things I care about. It's no fun to sing about things you don't like.
Of course, to publish something, you have to write it, polish it, then hire out the line editing, copy editing and cover design. After which, you pick your way through the minefield of conforming to the differing requirements of Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords, or hire someone to do it for you.
If I have enough ego to say I'm a writer, a director, a producer, and an actor, I should have the energy and the knowledge to write a scene for this great actor named Henry Fonda and direct him in it and have it work.
It is not necessary to argue to those for whom I write that the two great needs of mankind, that all men may be lifted up into the light of the highest Christian civilization, are, first, a pure, spiritual Christianity, and second, civil liberty.
I'm not trying to take over the world, but I find it really rewarding to write, and I thrive on learning.
Frontiersmen good and bad, gunmen as well as inspired prophets of the future, have been my camp companions. Thus, I know the country of which I am about to write as few men now living have known it.
How much energy is wasted in Italy in trying to write the novel that obeys all the rules. The energy might have been useful to provide us with more modest, more genuine things, that had less pretensions: short stories, memoirs, notes, testimonials, or at any rate, books that are open, without a preconceived plan.
Most rock journalism is people who can't write, interviewing people who can't talk, for people who can't read.
I like that original romance of having a pen and a legal pad and going anywhere in the world and being able to write a novel with just those two things.
In the odd moment when I am not thinking about horses, I write books.
