I gave up writing children's books. I wanted to escape from them as I had once wanted to escape from 'Punch': as I have always wanted to escape. In vain.
Writing is hard work and bad for the health.
Getting a great idea with song writing is a lot like love. You don't know why this one is different, but it is. You don't know why this one is better, but it is. It sticks in your head, and you can't stop thinking about it.
I grew up loving music and being super involved in church choir and school musicals and such, but when I started writing is when I fell in love with the idea of doing it for the rest of my life.
Often times, I'm surprised by what I'm writing or what I'm playing, and then that inspires me to keep going with it, so it ends up being a very adventurous process.
My songs tend to be about love. It drives some of the greatest songs. I'm looking forward to seeing what people make of my writing.
Writing checks for charities is necessary and important. But it can't compare with corporal works of mercy, which are infinitely greater.
I dabbled in writing, wrote really bad poetry in high school. I also took a few writing classes when I was an undergrad at Stanford. I was so intimidated.
I've always loved writing, and the impulse for me is storytelling. I don't sit down and think: 'What political message can I sell?' I love the creativity of it.
It's so easy to use tired, shopworn figures of speech. I love using long, fancy words but have learned - mostly from writing my biography of Winston Churchill - that short, strong words work better. I am ever-vigilant against the passive and against jargon, both of which are so insidious.
Writing makes you more human.
When I'm acting, that's all I'm doing. When I'm not acting, I'm not thinking about acting. If I'm writing, I'm just writing.
In France, I discovered that I love writing in the city. There's such an intensity to being in the city that matches the intensity of what you're experiencing in your head.
If I give myself a chore, for instance, when I was writing the songs for Shameless, I said to myself, Now, every day for 90 days you have to write a song; good, bad or indifferent. So that was really helpful.
I am not a total, complete nitwit when it comes to selling books. I promise you there will be unexpected things. Some of them I don't know yet. She's writing it all herself.
Sondheim is my god; I love the man. I learned a great deal about writing from his work, his lyrics, and his structure.
I'll have to get people to write songs for me right now until my own writing comes around.
In a way, I started 'Goon Squad' not even realizing I was writing a book. I thought I was just writing a few stories to stall before starting this other book that I wanted to write - or thought I wanted to write: I still haven't written it.
I had this grand plan for writing the history of the United States in six volumes. This was in the mid-1990s; I was fairly young and very ambitious. I pitched it to a publisher, who just laughed at me.
I'm enjoying writing songs that are more stripped back.
I had no interest or intention of ever writing music. I was a professional violinist in my 20s. I was obsessed with conducting, and I was conducting as much as I could, and I was studying as much as I could. I went to USC; I got an undergrad degree in violin and a master's degree in conducting.
Writing novels is the most exciting.
The first thing that attracts me to any script is the writing. If I find myself becoming lost in a good yarn, then I feel certain that others will, too.
For a man who no longer has a homeland, writing becomes a place to live.
Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.
So I decided to start writing plays, and went to Yale.
People ask me what I'm writing. They think I'm Sandra Tsing Loh. Or they ask about stand-up. 'No, that's Margaret Cho.' I really think there is this kind of glomming, that they think we are somehow all the same person.
I don't think there's a difference between writing for a newspaper or magazine and doing a chapter in a book.
'The Glass Menagerie' by Tennessee Williams is a great play. I had to read it for school when I was younger, but I started writing scripts after that. That's what got me into writing.
Even when the writing seems very frivolous, I'm puritanical. I don't mean my subject matter. It's that I'm almost pathologically incapable of leaving something when I'm not quite happy with it.
There's always a personal satisfaction in writing a song by yourself. You get the inspiration, and see it through, and you're done. It's focused and very personal.
I've always liked this idea that writing should comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable to create trouble. The value of a work of art can be measured by the harm spoken of it. If you're not feeling that, then absolutely, why bother?
Writing is finally play, and there's no reason why you should get paid for playing.
I really only have been seriously writing, finishing things and publishing things since January '91.
I'm not a fast writer, and I find the process of writing a first draft to be painful and frustrating. Usually, I start with a character, a premise, and some image that gives me a particular feeling.
I have always felt a special affinity with V. S. Pritchett. He worked from the ear, primarily, as I do, and he was an all-rounder, writing short stories, novels, memoir, travelogue, critical biography. He lived to be almost 100, and he never stopped, and his work is unified by a great generosity of spirit.
