The songwriters whom we think of being the greatest songwriters usually write one hit and six or seven flops. That includes the Irving Berlins and the Hoagy Carmichaels, the Harold Arlens, Cole Porter.
I have a small room to write in. One wall is completely covered in books. And I face the window with the curtain closed to stop the light hitting the computer.
Although my other ambition was to be a musical theater star (and I would attend college on a voice scholarship), writing was never far from my mind.
My mother read nursery rhymes to me, and my grandmother told me folk stories, but as a child I had no interest in writing whatsoever.
I wouldn't say the world is my parish, but my readers are my parish. And especially the readers that write to me. They're my parish. And it's a responsibility that I enjoy.
My own habit had always been to write about the things that ticked me off in a given day. If I kept a journal at all, I kept it to vent.
As an American man of the 1990s writing about a Japanese woman of the 1930s, I needed to cross three cultural divides - man to woman, American to Japanese, and present to past.
Writing a novel was completely awesome because parts of it could suck and I could throw them away. I didn't have to know the ending until I got there.
After a while, the characters I'm writing begin to feel real to me. That's when I know I'm heading in the right direction.
My writing has always been what you call 'narrative fiction' in the sense that it's got very strong plots and twists at the end.
I'm always crazy around you Rose. Here, I'm going to write an impromptu poem for you. 'Rose is in red But never in blue Sharp as a thorn Fights like one too.
When you are angry try your best to go to sleep, it keeps you away from speaking, writing and thinking while you are angry.
The writer writes in order to teach himself, to understand himself, to satisfy himself; the publishing of his ideas, though it brings gratification, is a curious anticlimax.
Understood what the struggle was about. My mother. Couldn't read or write, but she had more sense than many a graduate from Harvard.
The parts of me that hurt the worst want me to write something for them, but I can't. I don't know what to say. I'm lost in all this sadness, and so are they.
In twenty years I've never had a day when I didn't have to think about someone else's needs. And this means the writing has to be fitted around it.
I started to write things down, as a very young child, wanting to find a way to remember - to keep close, somehow - moments that made an impression on me.
A musician must make music, an artist must paint, an poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be.
My plan is to continue teaching many more years than the 32 years I've already enjoyed and continue writing, and promoting my books and websites if it's God will.
A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be
It's while writing that suddenly a point of view appears: 'So, that's what I really thought about this thing'. Then it feels part of me.
