When you're a screenwriter working on a film, you're not really even welcome on set, even if you know... When I wrote 'Elizabeth' and Shekhar Kapur was a friend of mine, but I wasn't really welcome on set, because the director is God and it's a very ...
I write what I like to read, and I enjoy love triangles in YA and adult fiction - not to mention in other media like TV, opera, theatre, and even in video games! I relish when dark and compelling characters compete for our protagonist's heart. The do...
I can't complain that I've had a public all through my writing life, but people don't quite know what I've written. People don't read you too closely. Perhaps, after I've died, they'll look at my stuff, and read it through, and find there's more in i...
Everyone thinks I have a coffee plantation in Sierra Leone, but I have a cashew crop project. I wrote about a woman who owns a coffee plantation! When you are talking about a woman writer coming from a hot country, there's a complete assumption that ...
'After 17' is a song I wrote when my first daughter went to college, so that's kind of where I'm at in that part of my life. If you listen to that song and knew anything about me, you'd say, 'Oh yeah, he wrote that about his daughter,' but I try not ...
I grew up when one of America's greatest black playwrights, August Wilson, was writing about life in Pittsburgh, but I never saw myself in any of his straight-male plays. And then I see 'Angels,' which was so honest and painful, and it had this black...
I missed my father so much when he died that writing about his life and mine was a way of bringing him back to life and getting me to sort of understand more about him and what made him the father, the husband and the man that he was, and how that ma...
For my writing, and because I love talking to young women about life, I often asked them which would they rather have - a father in the house with them while growing up or a big butt? I tell you 86 percent of the time, girls say a big butt because it...
I was writing this really long joke about the smell of poop, and I was like, 'What am I doing with my life?' I started to think about why I was a comedian, and then I came up with a reason for existence, which is: inserting absurdity or stupidity int...
Of course having a baby derails the writing process for some time. And I will be the first to say that I have essentially no social life, because there's just nothing left after being a mom, professor, and writer. I used to be big into rock climbing....
The reaction to 'Aftermath' has been far worse than to 'A Life's Work,' yet I find I'm perhaps a little less touched by it. In both cases, I've coped artistically by believing the criticisms weren't right. They upset me, but they didn't challenge my ...
People come to L.A. because they're chasing that dream of a better life. That's why I came here, because I thought it would be a place where I would find other people like me; people who wanted to write, people who had a dream of being something else...
I can remember somebody once saying to me that they thought my life must be less real than these other people that they were writing about, which I found a very peculiar thing 'cos all our lives are equally real, and it's just a matter of depicting t...
I'll only work on TV shows that have a 'Sookie' on them! Those are the only shows that will cast me. And I've never even met a Sookie in my life. Sookie on 'Gilmore Girls' was played by Melissa McCarthy. And Sookie, played by Anna Paquin, is number o...
I do have two data identities. I have my name, Bruce Sterling, which is my public name under which I write novels. I also have my other name, which is my legal name under which I own property and vote.
Moving to New York made all the difference in my creating this new series with Ellie Hatcher. I love Portland, and it's always going to be one of my favorite cities, but it was getting to the point where, after I'd moved to New York, I couldn't write...
The only time I felt I was different was when one of my friends said, 'I hate reading' and I stared at her like, 'What kind of an alien creature are you?!' Because it was so incomprehensible to me that someone could dislike reading! That really start...
I love writing about men. To get by in the world you have to know how men think. Not that all guys think alike, but women tend to think about more things at the same time, an overgeneralization, but I find it easier to make my male characters focus t...
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 ...
I'd say the key thing is to remain true to what originally got you into music. When I wrote 'Hallelujah,' it ignited me to do music because of the love and joy that I got from writing that song. Down the road, you get all of these opinions from peopl...
I'd love to act more. I've had to turn down multiple movies because I was on tour, but it's encouraging to know that someday there might be the right role, the right timing. And I've been writing a lot of music, so hopefully very soon I'll have recor...