There have been times in my life when I felt compelled to write things down as a matter of therapy, but whatever I kept about those days, I shredded. It was too personal.
I sometimes think that, since I started writing biographies, I've had more of a life in books than I have had in my real life.
I wrote every day between the ages of 12 and 20 when I stopped because I went to Barcelona, where life was too exciting to write.
For several decades, I believed it was necessary to be extraordinary if you wanted to write, and since I wasn't, I gave up my ambition and settled down to a life of reading.
I would say the secret is to be enthusiastic about everything that comes into your life. To care, to care about people. To be excited about everything that comes close to you. I love to read. And I love to write, mostly.
The way I live now is that I only write, which means that I'm very poor but very happy. Everything in my life is the way I want it to be.
The first record I spent five years writing and it was an amalgamation of all the things that happened in my life from the time I was fifteen to the time I was twenty.
I personally believe that I was... a previous life or something... a previous reincarnation, a bard of some sort, because most of the things I write about are descriptions of places I've never been to.
What I would do is when I was younger I would draw in a sketch book something that happened in my life and then write a little something on the side about what happened or what the story.
All I knew about bees when I started to write 'The Secret Life of Bees' was that they can live in a wall of your house, and that they make this incredible thing that I loved.
I have obsessed about my weight in some sort of way all my life. I used to write in my journal what I weighed every day.
I love the fact that people can relate to what I'm saying, even if it's not for the same subject I was writing about. That is the power of real music and real expression.
I love writing about my job because I loved it, and it was a particularly interesting one when I was a young man. It was like holidays with pay to me.
I once had a crush on one of my teachers. I wrote him a love letter and stuck it in a bag in his office. I didn't write my name on it, but I'm sure he figured out it was me.
When I got a little older, I started writing for the high school newspaper, 'The Maroon Wave,' and that's when I fell in love with journalism.
I love doing different things where, for a little while, I can focus on standup then sketch writing, then performing, then directing a video. That, to me, is stimulating.
I love thinking of movie stars who could play the characters in the books I write. I think Charlize Theron would make a lovely Marie Antoinette.
I've always been a writer because I've always been a student. My mom's a retired professor, so I come from a very academic background. I love writing, you know?
I have so many different projects, I hear voices in my head - the characters talking all at once - and I have to write to make them stop.
I like to write about the things I care about. It's no fun to sing about things you don't like.
All I need is a sheet of paper and something to write with, and then I can turn the world upside down.
