My family is involved and my wife Brenda is a great, great writer. She helps me with the writing of everything and also sings with me. I owe a lot to Brenda.
Scientists are always the ones who head into the ocean, but I want to take writers and politicians, people who can convey the beauty that is there and perhaps do something to take care of it.
On the other hand, I mean, that is what writers have always been supposed to do, was to rely on their own devices and to - I mean, writing is a lonely business.
I have pretty thick skin, and I think if you're going to be in this business, if you're going to be an actor or a writer, you better have a thick skin.
Women writers have been told, forever, that our stories were not valuable. Not as valuable as men's stories about wars, business, power.
Directing is the last frontier for women in the movie business. We are studio heads, we are producers and we are writers, but we are not directors in any numbers.
Relationships between writers and publishers are of course very strange and change all the time, rather like a see-saw.
I didn't think being a writer was a fancy thing. It was a job like any other job, except apparently you could do it at home.
If you're a misanthrope you stay at home. There are certain writers who really don't like other people. I'm not like that, I don't think.
It's possible that I've matured as a writer, and I hope I've matured emotionally, but I always find myself revisiting these adolescent scenes.
I think almost every writer in the world would hope that books would be always talked about with respect and civility and depth and seriousness.
As a singer, I just want to try to honor what the writers create - and as someone who's trying to write songs, I just hope I can stand in their company and not embarrass myself.
I've always been a writer. I hope to continue to write books until I can't anymore.
The nation that complacently and fearfully allows its artists and writers to become suspected rather than respected is no longer regarded as a nation possessed with humor or depth.
It seems disingenuous to ask a writer why she, or he, is writing about a violent subject when the world and history are filled with violence.
I tend to like to read history - recent history, because I find that much more intriguing than just a writer's imagination.
There may be something to the suggestion about the pace of technological change intimidating writers, though - it's been awfully hard to keep ahead of real developments.
I might add that you change as a person as you grow older, so you change as a writer, too.
I always think that good writers should be growing up on the brink of death - it really lets them see mortality very clearly.
I've told several writers this, and, again, I get back to it, but if you want to make God smile, tell him your plans.
But I was, and still am, an avid reader and so when I first started I chose to photograph many of the great writers in this country to try and earn a living.
