I keep drawing inspiration from people every day. All of a sudden, something strikes me so hard and dramatically, and then a dream comes - I sit down, cut it off and make a script out of it.
I always want to bring emotion across in a straightforward way. I don't want to get histrionic when I'm singing. For me that's just not interesting; it goes too far down one road.
I am a completely horizontal author. I can't think unless I'm lying down, either in bed or stretched on a couch and with a cigarette and coffee handy. I've got to be puffing and sipping.
The arms race is worse than it ever was, the dumping of creation down a military rat hole is worse than it ever was, the wars across the earth are worse than they ever were.
Stop running around, stop trying to return every email in your inbox immediately, stop cramming too much stuff into too few hours in the day. Sit down, shut up, and most importantly, be glad.
Self-righteous people can talk themselves into forgetting they are part of a civilization. They can then feed on that culture, bringing it down. It's happened many times in the past. It could happen to us.
Some folks believe that hardship breeds artistic creativity. I don't buy it. One can put up with poverty for a while when one is young, but it will inevitably wear a person down.
I put the weight on after we were together. I put on about 20 pounds when we got married, and people were flipping their lids. And then I put on more after that, and I've gone up and down since then.
I always enjoyed writing. I did playlets in high school, I did radio shows in college. That's one of the reasons I went down to Second City, because you could do acting and writing.
To be a writer is to connect and to play and to attempt to see clearly and understand. It astounds me regularly that feeling things deeply and writing them down is basically my job description.
Try not thinking of peeling an orange. Try not imagining the juice running down your fingers, the soft inner part of the peel. The smell. Try and you can't. The brain doesn't process negatives.
Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and wonder how I do these things. I can embarrass myself so badly that I literally get a hot prickle down the back of my neck.
I understand the self-loathing and the resentment, and the discipline that it takes to sit down in front of a typewriter or computer every single day, whether it's going well or not going well.
When you're down and out, there's no meaner place to live than Hollywood. You can get away with your embezzlements and your lies and your murders, but you can never get away with failing.
If we've deluded ourselves into thinking that our angry mass emails or conversation-stopping talking points serve as a ministry or carry out the purposes of God, we need to slow down and take a breath.
I grew up north of Chicago, not far from where the Schwinn bicycle plant used to be, and was conscious of the fact that these beautiful, everlasting bikes were made just down the road.
We had extremely democratic town councils in medieval Italy which knew the value of working together, and every now and then, down the centuries, this spirit returns.
Relationships grounded in mutual love, trust, caring and forgiveness. In all the ups and all the downs of life. Look closely, - who is really your family, and who in truth are just strangers in for the ride?
I'm often stunned when I come up over Mulholland, and I'm looking down at the Valley, and I can see for thirty miles; I can see the mountains, or all the way to the ocean.
In the early to mid-'90s, everywhere I turned, someone had died. It wasn't just people in bands. It was the people I was hanging out with. At some point, I thought, 'I may be heading down that road.'
Never look down to test the ground before taking your next step; only he who keeps his eye fixed on the far horizon will find the right road.
