I had to learn compassion. Had to learn what it felt like to hate, and to forgive and to love and be loved. And to lose people close to me. Had to feel deep loneliness and sorrow. And then I could write.
Writing allows me the time to travel and see the world, which is what I always wanted to do. I'd really like to have been Sir Richard Francis Burton, but it's the wrong century.
When I was writing the Destiny's Child songs, it was a big thing to be that young and taking control. And the label at the time didn't know that we were going to be that successful, so they gave us all control. And I got used to it.
If you are working in an office, where do you find the time to write a novel? But you can finish a short story in five pages. Furthermore, a short story is a perfect place to learn the craft.
Parents spend a lot of time talking over kids. My son went through a vocabulary burst as I was writing 'The Bear.' I thought, 'What if I just stopped and listened?'
Your senses are reeling all the time. Finally you find something to write and the very next day you go out and see something else which totally contradicts what you've written and every conclusion you've come to.
If I spent my time worrying about what other people would think of my work, I would be too self-conscious to write.
I used to hang out with grandfather all the time because he used to pick me up from school sometimes, or drive me to my mother's, so I'd be with my grandfather a lot. I used to watch him write his sermons.
I don't write about the same thing every time, everyday, different things are happening out there and if you take the time to look around, you can see that, then you can put it all together and tell the story.
I write all the time, but you just want to be careful what you put out. That's all. You want to have the confidence that you've done what you need to do to it, because otherwise it's an exercise in vanity.
I cry all the time when I watch 'Glee' because I don't know if it's satire or melodrama and that makes me feel like the writing is aware of itself, and that makes it OK to cry.
You should live in a manner that should enable you to devote time to writing and contemplation. As is often said, the writer is at work even when he is simply looking out the window.
I've been writing 'Green Lantern' for a long time, and one of the reasons I've enjoyed it is because the depth of stories you can tell is pretty endless with space and everything.
Then I thought I was going to be a photographer. I tried a hand at darkroom technician. I played in a band. It took me quite some time to discover that I wanted to write.
I really don't think I have that much of the gift; I have a little bit, but I wish I were Schubert or Chopin or Beethoven, though Beethoven had a very difficult time writing melody, too.
But at the time when he wrote, Englishmen, with the rarest exceptions, wrote only in French or Latin; and when they began to write in English, a man of genius, to interpret and improve on him, was not found for a long time.
The novel that's contemporary in the sense of being wholly 'of now' is an impossibility, if only because novels may take years to write, so the 'now' with which they begin will be defunct by the time they're finished.
Books provide context and allow you to think about things over time. Film is like writing haiku; there is an immense amount of pleasure in paring down and paring down. But it isn't the same.
Usually I'll write all the way through to an end, and then I go back and try to fix the ending so that it makes sense. I don't think out the plot ahead of time.
What is the luck of the draw that me - me - who finally writes a book, it comes out in the - in the - in the time, in the center of the first pandemic, H1N1? And I'm going out on signings, and I'm going out to the public. This is the one time when I ...
I always used to deny this, but I guess what I'm really saying is that I was writing to shock... And I dug deep and dredged up all kinds of vile things which fascinated me at the time.
