The purpose of writing is to hold a mirror to nature, but too much today is written from small mirrors in vanity cases.
Writing a screenplay, for me, is like juggling. It's like, how many balls can you get in the air at once? All those ideas have to float out there to a certain point, and then they'll crystallize into a pattern.
When the 'Guardian' is commissioning writers to write obituary pieces about you and your career... it doesn't get much nastier than that. And you've just got to go, 'It doesn't actually matter.'
I only take causes or write about things that I am passionate about, and I do it with a certain flair and a sort of wink and a nod.
When I'm writing a movie, it's usually pretty close to what the movie is going to be, which is just a luxury of being a writer-director.
I pay attention to lyrics and I know what rap fans care about. I try to write for the average listener and I'm conscious of the mainstream without selling out.
I tend to have an odd split in my mind: I tend to look at it as a writer and when the writing thing is OK and I'm happy with it, then I put on my actor's hat.
I was going to say that writing is about disclosure and acting is about obfuscation, but that's such a little lie. Both of them are about obfuscation and masking oneself.
Write about the thing that scares you most or your most private confession and you'll never have a problem coming up with decent fiction.
When you write a high-tech thriller, and then people in the defense establishment start calling you - people I can't name - you feel you've hit a nerve.
But even writing the column for the 'Telegraph,' that idea of working to deadlines, which as an actor that's not something you have to do in the same way. It's excited me into wanting to do a bit more.
Nobody thinks mystery writers go around killing people, but they always seem to assume singers are singing about themselves, especially if you write melancholy songs like me.
Sugar Ray and talked about doing some articles together or writing a book together but dealing with Sugar Ray was a lot like fighting him. He would fake you in and then he'd drop you.
You'll almost encounter a superstition amongst musicians, people sort of go through strange rituals, what they need to do to write a song.
Right now, writing for me is most rewarding because I'm old enough now to have something to say, which probably wasn't always the case.
I would rather write a book without a title if my true friend chooses to live in a million dollar home in London and acts foreign.
I do write about people who are complex and are striving with something and can't quite get past their own stuff, which would be a proxy for myself because that's what the deal is with me.
I think that's what fiction writing is actually all about. It's about trying to solve problems in creative ways.
There was a computer in our garage when I was growing up, and I'd go out there in winter and wrap myself in a blanket and write a story.
Between rounds of speed chess I read enough of a programming manual to teach myself to write programs on the school's DEC mainframe in the language Basic.
I have witness the stars brighter than a poet can create a simpleton world. Shall we write 'until death do us part.
