The first song that I remember writing in its entirety was when I was 9 years old. I wrote it on a bus, on a field trip. It was called 'Mystery Man,' and in retrospect, it was the beginning of my exploration of what it was like to have a man in your ...
I developed my own production company. I'm reading different books and writing, working on myself. I'm being focused on that, but also being focused on in front of the camera and balancing mommy life at the same time. I just want to continue to move ...
I fell in love with Virginia Woolf in college. I especially admire how well she writes about daily life, how she captures so much meaning and consequence in the smallest details of a day.
I've still got lots of writing in me. I have not left journalism, but I put it on hold to focus on acting. I love actors. I think it's a crazy thing to do with your life, and I have a tremendous amount of respect for them.
I do see an interest in writing for Twitter. While publishers still do love the novel and people do still like to sink into one, the very quick form is appealing because of the pace of life.
Today begins a new saga in my life which I expect to strengthen me and allow me time for reflection... I plan to write music while in prison, read and pray regularly and will come out a stronger, more confident woman.
The object is very clear in the fight against racism; you have reasons why you're opposed to it. But when you're writing a novel, you don't want the reader to come out of it voting yes or no to some question. Life is more complicated than that.
I've spent most of my life trying to wear a persona that didn't quite fit and when I started writing books, it was like finally becoming the right person.
Life isn't so complicated for children. They have more time to think about the really important things. That's why I occasionally moralise in my children's books in a way I wouldn't dare when writing for adults.
I believe enlightenment or revelation comes in daily life. I look for joy, the peace of action. You need action. I'd have stopped writing years ago if it were for the money.
I have spent my life on the road waking in a pleasant, or not so pleasant hotel, and setting off every morning after breakfast hoping to discover something new and repeatable, something worth writing about.
For a writer, children make life needlessly hard. I've muddled through a lot of things, but I have not muddled through my writing life. I work absolutely flat out, giving it my all.
The problem with making movies is that you have to devote so much of your life to fawning and flattering the men in suits, whereas that doesn't happen in books. You just go and write, and then the book comes out.
I like writing people from a slightly sharp angle and then throwing more light on them. I think in life we see somebody and make judgments very quickly about who they are and what they are. Or we think people are boring because they appear ordinary.
It was not just that Ross Macdonald taught us how to write; he did something much more, he taught us how to read, and how to think about life, and maybe, in some small, but mattering way, how to live.
I loved to read and to write, but then something happened. As I made my way through school, I kept getting handed books to read that didn't excite me and didn't even remotely connect to the realities of my life.
That's the whole point of writing to me - I put my characters under incredible duress, and from that comes their truth. In a way, I'm using them to try to find my own answers in life.
There were always moments where I'd say, 'What else can I do with my life?' But when I was 30 years old and discovered I could write - I wrote 'Black Cloud' in six weeks - it opened up a whole new world for me.
I was a 'young adult' when I wrote 'The Outsiders,' although it was not a genre at the time. It's an interesting time of life to write about, when your ideals get slammed up against reality, and you must compromise.
To have someone who never makes a mistake, never finds her personal life in disarray, never worries about work-life balance? I think that would be unreal. What I'm writing is real.
When you are writing a book, it feels as if you are simply concentrating on the world of the book and that whatever is happening in your personal life is outside the room, as it were. But maybe that's just the way you have to talk to yourself to make...