Writing can be a frightening, distressing business, and whatever kind of structure or buffer is available can help a lot.
For me writing biographies is impossible, unless they are brief and concise, and these are, I feel, the most eloquent.
As an actor, you're tied to the writing. You live and die by what's written for you. And you can elevate that to a certain extent, but really, that's your blueprint.
In the '70s, the newspaper guild managed to get people paid what they were worth, but the reporters suddenly became middle class. It's much more respectable, more uptight, and everyone speaks in guarded tones. And the writing isn't as good. We always had guys who were failed poets and failed novelists who did it to eat.
The great thing about writing compared to life is getting to tie things up.
Letter writing was clearly important to Reagan. Even as president he kept dashing off letters to friends, pen pals, media people, statesmen, critics, and the kind of people who write to presidents never expecting a reply.
I usually have about four books on the go - a bedside book, a lavatory book, a downstairs book, and the book in my study that I read sneakily while I should be writing. Short stories for the lavatory, obviously.
I like writing comic pages, discovering the rhythm of the panels, learning how much you can and can't express. It's good to stretch myself as a writer instead of always doing prose work; I write screenplays for the same reason.
I don't really go out and do too much like networking and Hollywood events kind of thing. But I do some writing, and I find it helps me as an actor in terms of giving yourself back the power and feeling a bit of strength in that respect.
It's really such a personal journey, making a record, but even more so writing the songs.
I don't know if it's a failure of imagination on my part, but I'm not going to be writing about Paris in the 1800s. I feel like it would come off as just ludicrously uninformed, even if I did a lot of research.
Many aspects of the writing life have changed since I published my first book, in the 1960s. It is more corporate, more driven by profits and marketing, and generally less congenial - but my day is the same: get out of bed, procrastinate, sit down at my desk, try to write something.
I would love to continue acting. Maybe one day I would like to try writing and directing.
Although psychoanalysis has influenced me personally, it has had curiously little influence on my writing. This may be because writers learn from other writers, not from theories.
I haven't any formal schedule, but I love to write in the morning, before breakfast. Sometimes the writing goes so smoothly that I don't take a break for many hours - and consequently have breakfast at two or three in the afternoon on good days.
I've never been much of a craftsman, in an educated way. But I think just the experience of writing makes the avenues I follow a little more efficient in some ways. At the same time, when you're young, you're a little more fearless, and there's less of an internal critic.
There are some people who have been reading me for years, and they keep saying kind things about the writing. That's what you're writing for, to get people to respond to it.
The English playwrights of the '50s and '60s didn't really keep writing or getting produced, while the Irish did. There's encouragement for the younger ones also in the fact that Ireland is exceptional in its ability to make theater part of the national dialogue, and it reaches to all four corners of the country.
Writing is a very easy way for me to express myself. When I was still at school, I would write for no reason other than I wanted to write.
The premise of Nossiter in 'Mondovino' would have been a lot more accurate when I started writing about wine in 1978 than when the movie was made in 2003. When I started, I was enormously critical of California wines, and I thought the entire wine industry was on a real slippery slope.
When you have four guys in a room writing songs, it different. It's great - that's what makes a band a band. Audioslave was great.
I have experienced bad dating and ineptitude with women all across the globe, from Vietnam to Paris. When I was 21, women were an enigma; they were this code that had to be cracked. They were 'The Other.' I have often thought writing this stuff into stand-up and shows would be an exorcism, but it hasn't been; it makes no difference.
I do have a personal life. I spend half of the week at home. One of those nights, I'll go out with some friends and have a good time. I have a day and a half at home, and love to just sit on my backyard by my pool, read a book, or do some writing. That's my vacation.
I started out writing when I was young; stuff about exposing the truth about how people are not what they appear, about how they are much more dysfunctional than they seem. Pulling back the curtain - that felt smart. But as I got older, exposing how frail people can be seems less and less deep.
I hope that there are many more women out there writing bits of feminist sci-fi. And men, also - men are allowed to write feminist things.
I am basically analytical, not creative; my writing is simply a creative way of handling analysis.
If I wrote in Michael Harrington's time, roughly 50 years later when he published 'The Other America', I'd still be writing about poverty and also entrenched racial injustice.
The difficulty of writing a second novel is directly proportional to how successful the first novel was, it seems.
My attitude to writing is like when you do wallpapering, you remember where all the little bits are that don't meet. And then your friends say: It's terrific!
I am drawn to characters so full of internal contradictions. Idi Amin was one. I loved writing him.
I was writing and playing in California for 11 years before I moved to Nashville.
I'm a Macintosh nut. I got my PowerBook, so if I'm not writing jokes, I'm working on that.
I don't write particularly to effect social change. I believe writing can do that, but that's not why I write.
The songs keep on writing themselves, and I really love them. It's as close as I get to a religion.
Heartbreak was the impetus to me writing poems and music in the first place. Over the years, I had my heart broken so badly that if I didn't find a way to get all the pain out, I was going to lose my mind. I was crazy! Like, wanting to slash tires and smash car windows. Crazy! I was so hurt that I had to write.
When I was 12, I was going through an awkward time. Writing music helped me find my voice and express the things I was feeling.
