I am writing about people who are alive in the city of New York during mid-20th-century America. And these people are like a character in a play or they are figures in a short story or a novel.
What’s the use of writing poetry for your peers? I don’t think I should sell my poetry to other poets. If that’s who my audience is, I’m dead, I’m not going to make any money.
I felt like I could write about quiet, self-contained moments and also about those moments when the world rushes in again.
America gave me the opportunity to open successful restaurants, start a TV show, and write books. I can even fill an auditorium when I give a speech, which in America is rare for a chef.
I undertake the same project as Montaigne, but with an aim contrary to his own: for he wrote his Essays only for others, and I write my reveries only for myself.
Why can I write 'South' with some assurance that you'll know I mean Richmond and don't mean Phoenix? What is it that the South's boundaries enclose?
When I write a tune - and it's been like this for many years - I always hear in the back of my head some sort of vague, orchestrated, fully fleshed-out big-band version of the song with other parts going on.
When I write something that would have made me laugh as a 10-year-old, or would have scared me or would have excited me, I know I'm onto something.
If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another.
Some comics have long routines to get them in the mood - I just prefer to sit down, write out the same jokes in a different order and then have a little prayer that I won't be met by silence.
When I started writing seriously in high school, English was the language I had at my disposal - my Spanish was domestic, colloquial, and not particularly literary or sophisticated.
I actually have two children now, and sometimes I wonder if that's it. Because they do make writing and directing more complicated and more difficult, especially now that they're very young.
I confess, I do have to remind myself almost daily that there are people on this earth capable of reading, writing, eating and dressing themselves who believe their lives are ruled from billions of miles away, by the stars - and, of course, the plane...
I've become a day writer: most people start as night writers, and I used to be, but something happened to my endocrine system. I do miss the 3 A.M. writing jags.
I designed all the characters, anyway, and Frank Doyle was doing all the writing. I didn't have any more input on what direction they were going to go with Josie.
I know you shouldn't spit in your own soup but I think most crime writing is like TV and doesn't make enormous demands on one's intellect.
I use my fiction to explore my own unconscious issues. I usually don't even know what's going on with me until I'm writing. That doesn't mean my books are autobiographical.
I'm not too easily distracted now I've had practice, but I write with nothing to look at. I used to rent an office that just had a view of a wall!
I tend to write about more than one generation because as a child I had contact with more than one generation; it was normal to be around older people.
I'd wanted to be a writer and when I came back to New York worked as a musician too, but I found my writing starting to get more and more referential to cinema.
When I write nonfiction, it's always absolutely true. There will be no moment in my nonfiction where I have made something up and have to apologize to the bullying hostess of a talk show.
