The first poem I ever wrote, about loss, when I was 5 years old, expressed the themes of everything I would ever write.
When Truman Capote wrote from the perspective of condemned murderers from a lower economic class than his own, he had some gall. But writing fiction takes gall.
Dr. Johnson was a lazy learned man who liked to think and talk better than to read or write; who, however, wrote much and well, but too often by rote.
I once wrote that the first week in Jerusalem was the hardest week of my life. I was different, other; my clothes were different, as was my language. All of the classes were in Hebrew - science, bible, literature. I sat there not understanding one word. When I tried to speak, everyone would laugh at me.
As for action movies, I did Tarzan, and I'm also about to shoot Meltdown, which John Carpenter wrote.
I still feel very close to the people I wrote shows with and some of the people I toured with. I feel very close to them, like a family or like college friends who you know and who have seen you at your worst and you spend 14 hours driving a van all piled on top of each other.
I knew there was something about 'Sun Medallion,' in particular, because I just had to record it the second I wrote it.
I was just learning to play guitar when Tracy Chapman came out. She wrote these songs, she played them by herself and I so admired her for that.
The more settled I've become, the more problematic my characters have become. There was a period when I wrote sensitive and gentle songs and these came at a time when life was at its most destructive. I think you write about what you need, on some level.
I don't admire Freud as much as some people do. Imagine Shakespeare being aware of the Oedipal complex when he wrote Hamlet. It would have been a disaster.
I wrote stories as a kid just for myself. One day, some of the kids in my class found some of my stories in my bag, and I was deeply embarrassed until I realised they enjoyed reading them.
The earliest books in the New Testament to be written were the Epistles, not the Gospels. It's almost as though Saint Paul and others who wrote the Epistles weren't that interested in whether Jesus was real.
The past actually happened but history is only what someone wrote down.
And then 'Wanderlust,' Ken Marino and David Wain wrote the funniest - they're amazing. That was one of my most favorite creative experiences; we're all up at that commune, a small group of people. Everyone was funnier than the next. It was an amazing ensemble feeling. Everyone gave and took in the best way.
Tonight I am going to take a party to the headquarters of the fire department, where I have a cinch on the captain, a very nice fellow, who is unusually grateful for something I wrote about him and his men. They are going to do the Still Alarm act for me.
My next project will be a Christian album, another one. I wrote the songs for the ones you're referring to, but I want to do some of my old gospel favorites. That's what my next album's going to be.
When I wrote 'Lord of the Flies' - I had no idea it would even get published.
Early on, when I wrote 'Little Man Tate,' I got pigeonholed. Somebody said to me, 'You're not very dark,' and I had trouble getting certain kinds of jobs... and I learned very early that I didn't want to get pigeonholed as anything. And my next script was 'Dead Again.'
So, how to stay inside the world of entertainment without actually getting another job? I felt the only logical answer was to become a novelist. So I wrote the first book - driven by some very real feelings of desperation - and it worked.
If I know I have to memorize lines, I'm really gonna try to memorize lines. It's hard for me sometimes, because somebody wrote these words and you're trying really hard to get them the way they said it.
When I wrote 'Marvin Gaye,' my whole intention was to make a record that people would put on a record player... and just instantly make out with each other.
Well, I always wanted to write from the time I was very little, and my mother encouraged me. She wrote a journal from the time she was 15 up until about the age of 76.
If the writing is honest it cannot be separated from the man who wrote it.
Writing about 2,000 words in three hours every morning, 'Casino Royale' dutifully produced itself. I wrote nothing and made no corrections until the book was finished. If I had looked back at what I had written the day before I might have despaired.
I look out at the stadiums full of people and see them all knowing the words to songs I wrote. And curling their hair! I remember straightening my hair because I wanted to be like everybody else, and now the fact that anybody would emulate what I do? It's just funny. And wonderful.
Here is the difference between Dante, Milton, and me. They wrote about hell and never saw the place. I wrote about Chicago after looking the town over for years and years.
'A Fair Maiden' existed in notes and sketches for perhaps a year. When I traveled, I would take along with me my folder of notes - 'ideas for stories.' Eventually, I began to write it and wrote it fairly swiftly - in perhaps two months of fairly intense writing and rewriting. Most of my time writing is really re-writing.
I wrote 'Don't Look Back' in November 2011, and when I wrote the novel, it wasn't contracted, so there was a freedom in that - no expectations or anything like that. It was also my first contemporary novel I'd written and sold, which was to Disney/Hyperion in January of 2012.
Nelson McCormack on 'Killing Kennedy' was really terrific because I wrote the script, and he had some terrific ideas. We went over the script together, and I was with him on set. So it was a collaborative effort.
Listen, I wrote 10 unsuccessful books before I broke through, so I'm looking all the time to keep my books fascinating. I want to write what people want to read, not push any message.
In 1969, I wrote a musical called 'Mother Earth.' It was a rock musical with an ecology theme. We did it at the South Coast Repertory Theatre in Southern California where I was a member. It was a smash hit in this small theater.
It came about as follows: over the years when I was involved in dianetics, I wrote the beginnings of many stories. I would get an idea, and then write the beginning, and then never touch it again.
Recently, lobbyists for the pharmaceutical industry wrote a prescription drug bill that increased their profits and did nothing to help seniors. The result: seniors are stuck with a confusing prescription drug plan that does little to help them with their costs.
I wrote a great deal of a novel, 'Winter's Tale,' on the roof of a Brooklyn Heights tenement on Henry Street. I was a technical climber, and now and then I would put down my manuscript and get up to walk along parapets and climb walls and chimneys.
I write short stories, and I wrote a play.
I grew up in a place where everybody was a storyteller, but nobody wrote. It was that kind of Celtic, storytelling tradition: everybody would have a story at the pub or at parties, even at the clubs and raves.
