I don't necessarily prefer playing villains. I know a lot of people say they are more fun, but if the scriptwriter has done their work well, you can find something realistic in a villain and find the mistakes in a hero - it's all down to the writing.
I was a 'learn by doing' writer - I never took any formal writing classes. So it took a long time to figure things out and find my voice.
Maybe I've lost a little, but I think everyone does over time. People have been writing that I'm getting old every year, and eventually they're going to be right. There's nobody in this game that's doing the same things they once did in the peak years of their career.
We're the only branch of government that explains itself in writing every time it makes a decision.
I always dreamed of writing in an orchestral context. But when you finish a piece, you want to hear it. So we played everything with Phish.
Often I have to move my body in a certain way, like exercising, to begin to get into the right rhythm for writing a song.
While I was writing 'Stick Out Your Tongue' in Beijing, the police began knocking on my door again. As soon as I finished the book, I moved to Hong Kong so that I could work undisturbed on my next novel.
It seems that writing chose me. I feel that because I know history, and I know the history of so many cultures; I have lived a large life.
Goal-getting matters. And writing down the brave acts and bold dreams you intend to accomplish will provide the spark to get them done.
It's a real gift to be able to have the works of brilliant, great people to learn from and build from. It gives you so much more to draw on, and then you don't have to be all about three-chord pop songs. I don't really like that kind of writing.
Writing poetry is the hard manual labor of the imagination.
I don't take off time from teaching to write. I take time off from writing to teach.
I think that what's unique about sci-fi - at least from the view of a lot of Chinese writers - is that sci-fi is least-rooted in the particular culture that they're writing from.
The fun of writing established characters is that there's a rich mythology to draw from - you get to play with toys you loved as a kid.
I don't really read as much as I used to. A lot of what I was looking for as an escape I find in writing. And the other thing is that I don't want to get into someone else's language when I'm working.
Playing shows is really fun. And writing music is really fun. But going on tour for a year is one of the more soul-crushing experiences you can have as a creative person.
I like the way words go together and I like the gamesmanship of writing poetry. It is such a challenge.
My writing day has grown shorter as I've aged, although it seems to produce the same number of pages.
Then l learned to play guitar and l started writing songs and my mother formed for me a publishing business, so we started publishing and managing artists.
What is writing but an expression of my own life?
I like English, and I like writing essays, and that kind of stuff.
I was sort of on a mission with 'American Splendor.' I wanted to try to prove that comics could do things. I wanted to expand them beyond superheroes and talking animals. And I knew that was going to take a long time. But I just started writing an autobiography about my quotidian life.
Actually I was writing with people that didn't get records.
Advertising isn't just the disruption of aesthetics, the insults to your intelligence and the interruption of your train of thought. At every company that sells ads, a significant portion of their engineering team spends their day tuning data mining, writing better code to collect all your personal data.
I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.
I'm not a professional; I lack even basic knowledge about writing music.
To be honest, writing comics is a dream come true - the form is unparalleled and is home to some of the most original and innovative storytelling around.
My other advice is to start writing songs and singing right away.
But really, it was reading that led me to writing. And in particular, reading the American classics like Twain who taught me at an early age that ordinary lives of ordinary people can be made into high art.
And dialogue, I'm good at it, and it's because it's the only thing you have to work with in TV writing.
For me, it's writing a book and telling people about this story.
Books and all forms of writing are terror to those who wish to suppress the truth.
Even when I am writing I usually take a break around lunchtime and go for a little walk to clear out my head.
I think enthusiasm is the answer to passionate writing.
I would like to shift more into writing for and producing people.
I started off doing fiction in 1993. It didn't occur to me to do nonfiction because it wasn't a thing yet. So I was bumbling around, writing short stories, and then I took a nonfiction workshop, and I realized that this was what I was supposed to do.
