I write songs that are like diary entries. I have to do it in order to feel sane.
Once I write something, I never try to write that same style again, because I get very schizophrenic musically.
I write for what's left of the eight-year-old still rattling around inside my head.
Everything has to be clean and orderly when I sit down to write. I have candles going, and small objects that remind me of what I am working on, or bring me into the world of the character.
You don't get shouted at at the 'Guardian.' Nobody bullies you at the paper; nobody tells you what to write. Now, I love working in that atmosphere; I am free to research and write what I want.
What comes to me always is a character, a scene, a moment. That's going to be the beginning. Then, as I write, I begin to perceive an ending. I begin to see a destination, although sometimes that changes. And then, of course, there's the whole middle section looming.
I try to write fun - though difficult and challenging - things for actors to do, because I know if they're having fun, they're going to give it everything they got.
I can't listen to anything when I write, not even the TV. I do have to listen to music when I drive, though.
I was born to travel and write verse.
I love singing. It's who I am. When I act, I take a small part of myself and just magnify it, but when I'm singing, that's who I am. I don't write music, so I choose songs that I would have written.
How do I let the director know how obsessed I am and willing to do anything for the movie? Like, I wanted to write this one director a letter, so I wrote him a handwritten note. But then I was like, 'How many people are writing this guy handwritten letters? Is it going to seem cheesy? What do I do?'
I love a lot of music that's considered folk music, but I also love a lot of music that's considered punk or considered rap. I don't mind being called a folk singer. But it seems a bit limiting. I want to be able to write whatever kind of song I want.
I certainly wanted to write a book that was honest about New Orleans without explaining it to death, so much so that the first draft contained references absolutely incomprehensible to anyone who hasn't lived here for several years.
Your emotional life is not written in cement during childhood. You write each chapter as you go along.
It seemed to me that I could write commercial fiction. I wasn't sure whether I could, or whether I wanted to write serious fiction at that point. So I said, 'Let me try something else,' and I wrote a mystery - but I didn't know much about it.
Your temperament is what you write with, but it's also how you deal with the world.
I spent every night until four in the morning on my dissertation, until I came to the point when I could not write another word, not even the next letter. I went to bed. Eight o'clock the next morning I was up writing again.
The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.
I write because I have always been curious about what it would feel like to be someone else, in a different situation. Fiction is a wonderful way of exploring that.
My poems always begin with a metaphor, but my way into the metaphor may be a word, an image, even a sound. And I rarely know the nature of the metaphor when I begin to write, but there is an attentiveness that a writer develops, a sudden alertness that is much like the feel of a fish brushing against a hook.
I'd chosen to dedicate my life to writing, and I asked myself, 'if you write your whole life, and nobody ever sees a word, is it as a writer that you die?'
Your first duty as a writer is to write to please yourself. And you have no duty towards anyone else.
It's amazing how fast generations lose sight of other generations. One of the first things the young composers who come to work with me say is that they want to write music people will like, instead of gaining their credentials by being rejected by the audience.
At that time, I had recently finished a book called Amazing Grace, which many people tell me is a very painful book to read. Well, if it was painful to read, it was also painful to write. I had pains in my chest for two years while I was writing that book.
I write songs very quickly, so the 20 minutes of joy I get out of writing a song doesn't compare to the two months of joy I get engaging with the people who like my music.
I'd get home at 3:30 A.M. from the bar after my shift ended at 1. I'd write jokes, film it, and then sleep. So I did that for two years.
Why would they have gone to the trouble to hire the best comedy writers in the business to write funny material for us to play straight, if the children in our audience were the only audience.
I was quite a successful evangelist. I've had people write to me and say, 'Gee, I'm a Christian because of you and I hear you're not a Christian, that's shocking to me.' I don't take these things lightly, but that's who I am. I can't change it.
The only other thing which I think is important is: Don't write a book or start a book with the expectation of communicating a message in a very important way.
I am Hollywood's hottest young, middle-aged director, but I'll write out of New York because I don't want to become a salad head. That's what you become out there: a guacamole dip.
Sometimes I write quickly, sometimes I spend several weeks on a single poem. I would really love for readers not to be able to guess which of the poems took so much work!
I write a lot about my experiences and the people I meet. I've got a lot of material. But a book about me? It seems sort of odd.
I can write anywhere that's quiet. I have a study in my apartment, but I often work in the kitchen of a house that we rent in the country.
I'm much more used to the TV shows, which are demanding to write and perform but very fulfilling.
A lot of my songs are written prophetically: I write something, and then I make it happen.
No one knows how to write a novel until it's been written.
