The play is one of the very few pieces of great dramatic and comic writing that I have read in a long, long time. I was drawn to it because of the power of the writing, which gives me the actor a chance to explore many facets of myself.
I'm always in that mode - whenever I have a little free time, I'm always recording songs, writing, whatever I gotta do. It's like my job is my vacation.
I remember that as I was writing a poem on 'Snow' when I was eight, I said aloud, 'I wish I could have the ability to write down the feelings I have now when I am little, because when I grow up, I will know how to write, but I will have forgotten what being little feels like.'
While I was writing 'The Last Werewolf,' I didn't watch any horror movies.
There are some different things I'm writing and developing, but I don't know where they'll go. They're fun stuff that I would be in and are written in my voice, for me.
However far fiction writers stray from their own lives and experiences - and I stray pretty far from mine - I think, ultimately, that we may be writing what we need to write in some way, albeit unconsciously.
I love song writing, so I'm always happy to write for other musicians.
Writing about the future and the past is less a way of dramatizing change than of showing, by way of contrast, what abides.
Writing a mystery is like drawing a picture and then cutting it into little pieces that you offer to your readers one piece at a time, thus allowing them the chance to put the jigsaw puzzle together by the end of the book.
Writers do well to carefully attend to those moments of inspiration, because chances are that they're writing from a very deep place. The subsequent search that ensues to continually attend to that voice that you hear is what is going to give the story drive.
I'm pretty sure people are going to start writing letters again once the email fad passes.
In my writing class, we never, ever talk about the writing - ever. We never address a story that's been read. I also won't let anyone look at the person who's reading. No eye contact; everybody has to draw a spiral. And I would like to do a drawing class where we could talk about anything except for the drawing. No one could even mention it.
I think the writing of literature should give pleasure. What else should it be about? It is not nuclear physics. It actually has to give pleasure or it is worth nothing.
I don't see much comedy in the Bible, where people are writing about funny people. It's not there.
In today's world, it never looks good when you're suing somebody who earned $20,000 for writing a book over a period of a year or two.
How can you stop writing?
I have a really hard time writing my own lyrics for this record, because one, I had to write so many and also I was kind of perplexed by the idea of how I was going to sing and play... because at that time, we hadn't really thought about asking someone else.
You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.
I think writing for a world one has invented can be infinitely more interesting than writing for the world we've all inherited.
I don't expect you'll hear me writing any poems to the greater glory of Ronald and Nancy Reagan.
I started doing my own animated movies when I was in ninth grade; that's when I got the filmmaking bug. When I was about 16, I started writing jokes for doing stand up, and then I was 19 and started doing stand up.
When the stories come easily and the writing process doesn't feel laboring, that's usually a good sign for me.
Writing is like carrying a fetus.
Verse comedy is interesting to me because of the challenge of writing in rhymed couplets, which is not a form that's usually amenable to English, yet to me it gives great possibility for comedy.
Nothing matters but the writing. There has been nothing else worthwhile... a stain upon the silence.
When I started writing a business column 15 years ago, I knew I'd found the perfect job for myself. As a columnist I could pick my own topic, do my own analysis, say what I wanted to say and attribute it to myself. Best of all, I could write in my own voice.
Jane Austen was writing about boring people with desperately limited lives. We forget this because we've seen too many of her books on screen.
I lost that excitement I had when I first started out. It was all about the need to just get a job, and so I found the joy again when I was writing Deuce Bigelow. I was laughing so hard and along with my writing partner at the time, simply laughing until we cried.
Probably having fallen in love with music and movies at a young age and then first learning about writing by kind of following the path of writers like Dave Marsh and Lester Bangs and being a rock journalist.
Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.
I stopped working a few years ago because I just lost a spark that I'd had before. I thought I'd just try writing, and maybe start directing, but I did it very quietly.
The part of my writing I find the most rewarding is when people write to me or speak to me in public to tell me how his or her life has been changed by my books.
I didn't make any money from my writing until much later. I published about 80 stories for nothing. I spent on literature.
Life can't defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for life itself is a writer's lover until death.
I think the hardest thing about making music now is being a great dad at the same time. There's an insanity that goes with writing - a mad scientist thing that you have to go through - and sacrificing a kid's upbringing to do that is not an option.
Writing a simple melody can take weeks to get it right where I want it, but I do quite enjoy it.
