Writing quotes
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"It's a big thing to call yourself a poet. All I can say is that I have always written poems. I don't think I'm interested in any discussion about whether I'm a good poet, a bad poet or a great poet. But I am sure, I want to write great poems. I think every poet should want that."
"I work on the assumption, or let it be the fear, that the reader will stop reading if I stop being interesting."
"People should be stopped from writing poetry. There's far too much of it. And if they're any good, they'll go ahead anyways."
"Writing is a performance art for me. They're very closely aligned, writing and performing. But I'm a writer, not a performer."
"Little books are the things to write at my age, I've decided. Avoid the big ones, go for the little ones."
"What is Camille Paglia doing, writing that an actress as gifted as Anne Heche has the mental depth of a pancake? How many pancake brains could do what Heche did with David Mamet's dialogue in Wag the Dog? No doubt Heche has been stuck with a few bad gigs, but Paglia, of all people, must be well aware that being an actress is not the same safe ride as being the tenured university professor of humanities and media studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia."
"Reading and writing... are exciting. The most exciting things I can think of. And now, as I reflect... I have to say that I've been lucky in that I'm amused by what I do - sufficiently amused."
"This quality becomes important at a time when almost everyone is a poet. And as I said, we live in an age where almost everybody is a poet, but scarcely anyone can write a poem."
"Humphrey Searle writes music that sounds like the theme from 'Star Wars' played backwards through a washing machine."
"I don't know anyone who sits down to write a song hit except Irving Berlin. He can't help writing hits."
"Being in unfamiliar places has no effect on my writing, except that it often means I'm caught up in the logistics of travel, the places and people on the spot, etc., etc., which can mean that I don't have the time to write. But I try, wherever I am, to take a couple of hours in the early evening to go off and write. Because I never write from personal experience, per se, where I am makes no difference except for this element of available time."
"I'm always reading. I have four books on my nightstand right now. The same is true with writing, I tend to work on several varying projects at once."
"I tend to write, either myself, or I sometimes write with a co-writer, my friend that lives up the road. It's usually a relatively solitary thing, but I do like coming up with ideas."
"As you get older you don't want to just do the same thing, otherwise there's not much point. I think it's more or less trying to write things that, perhaps, say more by doing less, or you're always trying to refine things, make things a little simpler, a little more essential."
"I suppose ever since I was about 14, I remember listening to "Sgt. Pepper's," and I remember thinking, "how do you possibly write songs like that?" I remember starting to try and write songs around that age, but just sitting around with an acoustic guitar, and try to come up with ideas for songs, and that's just what I've done ever since. I just never really stopped doing that, I suppose."
"I like the process of writing songs. It makes me feel good."
"I tend to write pretty much by myself. I always did that anyway. I used to write with Ron Strykert 'cause he was the only guitarist and we played well together. We lived in the same place. I would play a certain style and he would kind of dance around what I did, in a sense. I learned from him and also vice-versa. With this band, I think I bounce ideas off everybody. Perhaps on the next album they'll be more collaborative stuff, but for the last 2-3 years, I've been pretty well writing by myself."
"It's great fun if you get a good piece of writing and you can pretend to be someone else, tell a story that needs to be told, make some kind of connection. I've always fancied myself as a leading man, but I really doubt whether anyone else sees me that way."
"Twenty years ago, when I started writing, I didn't define myself as an African-American writer. And then you write books and you're focused on what's inside your books, and that kind of term is generally used on the outside, by the critical establishment."
"As I get older and write more books I'm definitely allowing the humorous side of my personality more rein in my work."
