Unfortunately, I don't get to read nearly as much as I want because I'm always working on my own stuff, either the novels or newspaper columns.
But I've come to the point in my evolution on the instrument where I realize that I can't play the same stuff that just a guitar player or organ player would play - and I need to embrace that in a big way.
And their pals vote for their stuff when they're not on the panel, and it just keeps going that way. And they tend to be very fringe artists, so anything before the 20th century is not worth considering. This is out of date.
Put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it." ( , 1964)
There's plenty of stuff that I don't feel dissident about: I really like tea, I don't have any problem with that. I like lots of paintings.
I guess I'm not that metrosexual. My bathroom cabinet is hardly overflowing with products. I only really have my stuff for shaving. I can't honestly say I moisturise, though I probably should.
I don't do facials or any of that stuff, but my workout regime does tend to depend on whether I have to take my top off in my next film because otherwise I know I'm too heavy.
With expectations, when you throw that stuff out there, when you put a bunch of pressure on yourself to reach those goals, you don't do anything different. You just keep working to get better.
All these actors who died before I was born, all the theaters and the artistic movements - all that stuff fills you up and makes you feel like you're the inheritor of all this information and of all its passion.
There is no sense in owning the copyright unless you are going to use it. I don't think anyone wants to hold all of this stuff in a vault and not let anybody have it. It's only worth something once it's popular.
One constant writing ritual, no matter what I'm writing, is that I cannot write if people are around me. It wigs me out - the idea that someone is reading as I'm writing stuff.
An intelligent woman is a goldmine! She has the ability to learn, reason and understand things better and faster than her contemporaries. She is competent, alert and can reason out stuffs easily.
I will not let myself down like that -- I also know what feels good and it doesn't feel good to harbor anger and resentment ... We do have tools to work through stuff. Everybody does.
This stuff on enemy combatants, the Bush Administration has fought like a tiger to avoid having to produce any evidence to a judge to show why somebody is locked up in perpetuity. Another example of that is the torture scandal.
But there's so much kludge, so much terrible stuff, we are at the 1908 Hurley washing machine stage with the Internet. That's where we are. We don't get our hair caught in it, but that's the level of primitiveness of where we are. We're in 1908.
I have a lot of mermaid stuff. I did start collecting a lot before I had children because I didn't know if I would have a boy or a girl. So I saved everything.
Babbo's menu is only four pages, but it's overwhelming - there are 20 different pastas in there, a lot of stuff. There is nothing I hate more than a useless, lazy menu with only three appetizers and four entrees.
There was an ITV television production of the second novel I wrote, called 'Murder of Quality.' It was a little murder story set in a public school - I'd once taught at Eton, and I used that stuff.
Songwriting is my way of channeling my feelings and my thoughts. Not just mine, but the things I see, the people I care about. My head would explode if I didn't get some of that stuff out.
In most of the stuff that I've done over the years as a sideman, I wasn't really a session musician, because to me, a session musician is a guy who makes his living in the studio, and I never really did that.
I keep myself content by doing lots of different stuff and make sure that my next role is completely different to the last. I just enjoy the versatility of it, the challenge of doing lots of different things. It keeps the job interesting.
