There's a practical problem about time and energy, and a more subtle problem of what it does to a writer's head, to continually analyze why they write, where it all comes from, where it's going to.
As you know, the Australian Labour Party is committed to turning the country into a republic. We've not stipulated a timeline for doing that. We are sensitive to the other priorities we've got as a nation and in the world, but in time the country wil...
Normally I begin writing a song with just with aim to express something, and sometimes I don't know what I want to express until a sentence comes to my head that will sum up everything about how I'm feeling at the time.
From the time I could play the piano, I remember trying to write tunes. They were in my head, and I would just sit down and start noodling. Next thing I knew, I had written a melody.
I had a normal upbringing and went to public school. If I ever, even for a second, started getting a big head, I was brought back to reality pretty quickly. I was working full time and still had to fight for a cell phone.
It doesn't matter how much I think I know about Florida, it still flips me on the head every time. It's just an absurd, eclectic place, and the stories that can come out of that place just never stop.
The show was number one in the ratings, Gordon Russell was our head writer, the story lines were magnificent and the acting most exciting. I loved working with Judith Light and all the other actors on the show at that time.
In 1986, I was attacked in the street as I helped Neil Mullarkey from the Comedy Store Players to put up posters. We were in the wrong place at the wrong time - midnight - and we were English. I got kicked in the head.
Normally, I would run with a group of guys in my camps. A couple of days before the fight, I would run by myself. That was my time to choreograph the fight in my head, so I needed to be myself.
I think that there are fiction writers for whom that works well. I could never do it. I feel as if, by the time I see that it's a poem, it's almost written in my head somewhere.
I shaved my head about 15 years ago and the first time I shaved it, I started running my hand through my hair and it was very therapeutic.
As a writer, I absorb stories, allow them to churn within my own head and heart - often for years - until I find a way of telling them that fits both my time and temperament.
Reggie Lampert: [explaining a puppet show] The man and woman are married. Peter Joshua: I can see that. They're batting each other over the head.
Reporter 1: What's that? Reporter 2: Another Venus. Reporter 1: Twenty-five thousand bucks. That's a lot of money to pay for a dame without a head.
[Why he was cutting the heads off parking meters] Luke: Small town, not much to do in the evenin'.
Joe Gould: [Between rounds] You gotta stop some of those lefts! Jim Braddock: You see any gettin' past my head?
[Firefly emerges from a vase that has been stuck on his head] Rufus T. Firefly: Any mail for me while I was gone?
Sweet Dick Willie: You wanna boycott someone? You ought to start with the goddamn barber that fucked up your head.
Simon: Said Simple Simon to the pieman going to the fair, "Give me your pies... or I'll cave your head in."
Adolf Hitler: The war is lost... But if you think that I'll leave Berlin for that, you are sadly mistaken. I'd prefer to put a bullet in my head.
Koulikov: You see, they're stubborn. That's the good thing about the Germans. Man, you got to admin, when they get an idea in their heads...
