I'm an author. And writers write books. And writing books is a full-time career.
I figure I wrote 37 songs in 20 years, and that's not exactly a full-time job. It wasn't that I was writing and writing and writing and quit. Every now and then I wrote something, and every now and then I didn't. The second just outnumbered the first.
Writing is very much a playground - an artistic playground. It's the most fun thing I do.
I started out as a poet. I've always been a poet since I was 7 or 8. And so I feel myself to be fundamentally a poet who got into writing novels.
We've got a bunch of new writers now who tell me they grew up watching The Simpsons. It's bizarre, and they're writing some very funny stuff.
Poetry is how I feed the soul, and it's how I fire the furnace of writing.
I learned you have to move fast, writing futuristic satire in America: Before you know it, you're a realist!
If I had to read only one author, it would be Gabriel Garcia Marquez because I love the mystical, magical quality of his writing.
It wasn't until I started to read short stories - by people like Alice Munro, Mavis Gallant, John Updike... Eudora Welty - that I became excited about the possibilities of writing.
Getting 'Millionaire' right was as hard as writing 'Dirty Pretty Things.' Harder. In the pilots, contestants kept wanting to take the money; we had to find ways - the lifelines - of keeping them in the seat, answering the questions. But there is so much snobbery about popular culture. A game show just isn't valued as much as a novel.
It usually helps me write by reading - somehow the reading gear in your head turns the writing gear.
Geisha because when I was living in Japan, I met a fellow whose mother was a geisha, and I thought that was kind of fascinating and ended up reading about the subject just about the same time I was getting interested in writing fiction.
As a generalization, fantasy writing has leaned more on political storytelling the more it's tried to escape the inevitable influence of Middle-earth, and revise the Eurocentric and Christian tropes that Tolkien's particular worldview bequeathed.
I have been writing since I was a kid. I also traveled a good deal for my work and did extended stays in places like Geneva.
There is good and mediocre writing within every genre.
Writing is not a genteel profession; it's quite nasty and tough and kind of dirty.
George Orwell is a pinnacle writer, for his combination of moral insight and literary writing.
Ira Gershwin, shame on him. I mean, some of the writing.
I've probably written some books - I know I've written some books that were more interesting to me than to a large audience, but that was mostly when I was first getting started in academia and writing for a narrow audience.
I went to Gettysburg College, where the famous Civil War battle was fought. I majored in English. I would've liked to major in writing, but they didn't offer a major in that.
