our finest writing will certainly come from what is unregenerate in ourselves. It will come from the part that is obdurate, unbanishable, immune to education, springing up like grass.
I do believe we should push each other to write better songs and make better music. We do ourselves a disservice if we sit back and float along the river instead of trying to paddle and guide ourselves to a more creative place.
The multilevel, the conscious and the unconscious, is natural when I write scripts, when I come up with ideas and stories.
I want to write a book of poetry, as well as children's stories.
I do a lot of performing, but don't get a chance to go to the studio and write good music.
The roughest part for me when I'm writing a song is staring at a blank page. Where am I going from here? If you're a songwriter, you have to do that every time you start a song.
When I try to write I try to write something different every time. That's the challenge.
Sit down and write it down with a pen and then make up your mind you are going to do it. Don't spend any time thinking of why you can't. The fun is not in getting it, the fun is in growing. Goals are to help us grow, goals are to help us get. The getting is a site benefit; the growth is the real benefit.
I didn't have the time to literally write and draw the strip at the same time.
Once I went into songwriting, I figured I had to - I couldn't be a hellfire rock 'n' roller. But I could write hellfire lyrics.
There's enough songs for people to listen to, if they want to listen to songs. For every man, woman and child on earth, they could be sent, probaby, each of them, a hundred records, and never be repeated. There's enough songs. Unless someone's gonna come along with a pure heart and has something to say. That's a different story.
In writing songs, I've learned as much from Cezanne as I have from Woody Guthrie.
The funny thing about me is I'm kind of schizophrenic, because after four or five nights in a row of going out to parties, I just have to be alone. I hate people and feel like they're keeping me from what I really want to do, like write a fabulous novel, which I probably never will.
When things [writing] are over, I always think, 'well, I'm never going to do anything again because I have no ideas so I'm going to go be a farmer'. Or else ideas will come and and if not then I become a farmer. Hopefully won't happen.
I just like to write and then perform.
People are gonna think that MTV censored me, and they really didn't. I really wanted to try to make a show that didn't rely on offensive, edgy material because I think it was an exercise in trying to write without that. Because I see that as a crutch sometimes and I want to know that I can do something funny and worthwhile without that. And also make a show that my parents would like and that kids could watch with their parents.
Even those who write against fame wish for the fame of having written well, and those who read their works desire the fame of having read them.
Those who write against vanity want the glory of having written well, and their readers the glory of reading well, and I who write this have the same desire, as perhaps those who read this have also.
There are some who speak well and write badly. For the place and the audience warm them, and draw from their minds more than they think of without that warmth.
Writing is to descend like a miner to the depths of the mine with a lamp on your forehead, a light whose dubious brightness falsifies everything, whose wick is in permanent danger of explosion, whose blinking illumination in the coal dust exhausts and corrodes your eyes.
I'm a little nervous. Definitely. Especially coming from an album like Biophilia, which was about the universe. This is more of a traditional singer/songwriter thing. When I started writing, I fought against it. I thought it was way too boring and predictable. But most of the time, it just happens; there's nothing you can do. You have to let it be what it is.
When I write a song, I see a tunnel, and then the chorus is an open space, or the bassline is doing this shape. I see songs as a more of a geometric, spacial experience.
If writing is your passion, write and don't let anyone else convince you otherwise. You don't need to quit your day job to do it. Create a realistic schedule and stick with it.
Everybody is different. Some writers can write reams of great books and then J. D. Salinger wrote just a few. Beethoven wrote nine symphonies. They were all phenomenal. Mozart wrote some 40 symphonies, and they were all phenomenal. That doesn't mean Beethoven was a lesser writer, it's just some guys are capable of more productivity, some guys take more time.
The pen is an instrument of discovery rather than just a recording implement. If you write a letter of resignation or something with an agenda, you're simply using a pen to record what you have thought out.
