To write for PC reasons, because you think you ought to be dealing with this subject, is never going to yield anything that is really going to matter to anyone else. It has to matter to you.
Crassly put: When I write, I am trying not to bore myself and my readers.
I think that you certainly don't have to be aged and travel the world to write a poem.
In fact, sometimes traveling the world is a way of not writing a poem, but it's the quality of experience. It's being able to experience something and when you begin to write about it be able to apply the tools that you need for writing.
At the very beginning when I begin writing a poem I try not to think of the audience or anyone at all except for trying to get at the very center of what is driving that poem. In a way it's like analyzing myself.
If I begin writing a poem that means I'm intrigued in some way by whatever it's about and that if I'm not trying to find something new and pushing the envelope in the poem I can't expect my reader to be particularly excited about it either.
My inspiration comes from everywhere, just walking down the street and I never know where it's going to come from, so I keep a notebook with me at all times and the only criteria for anything making it into that notebook is if it stops me in my tracks for even an instant, if it catches my eye or my ear and I just write it down.
What writing does is to reveal.
I think I'm more prolific in the songwriting.
I used to wish I could write songs like the others - and I've tried but I just can't. I get the words all right, but whenever I think of a tune and sing it to the others they always say 'Yeah, it always sounds like such a thing' and when they point it out I see what they mean. But I did get a part credit as a composer on one - it was called What Goes On.
I figure I write for people who are intelligent enough to do some labor. Lazy readers are not my ideal readers.
One of the things I'm constantly telling my students is that they're never going to write a poem everyone gets, or if they do, they've failed. They should leave someone behind every time.
Racism in our countries is a fact in that the indian is not allowed to be a politician or aspire to being head of state. It has reached the point that 99% of the indigenous women have not gone to school. The indigenous are condemned to live in a situation designed to exterminate them. They receive a pittance of a salary, they neither speak nor write the language, politics dictates their situation. Is this slavery? I don't know what it's called. It is not the same as before because we are in modern times.
It's a gift that I have and I became good at it. When I heard my first song I didn't even know that I could write songs.
I don't believe in writing people off.
I'm excited about being able to write and produce songs from an executive standpoint as well as the business side of it and the political side of it. I'm working on angles when it comes to the music business because I feel like that's the only way you can become a mogul.
When you're an artist, you can only do your own stuff. Even if you only write for other people, you're really more focused on yourself. So while everybody's out touring, I'm working on records.
I never thought I was good enough actually to write.
Writing is the only thing in my life that doesn't get easier. It just doesn't.
I'm pretty fortunate that I'm in the films I'm in largely because the directors have asked me to be in them. I'd love to do more of them, but the writing and historical stuff I'll probably always do.
I always read what I write out loud, and I did that long before any radio thing. My editor finds that unusual.
Sitting with a deck of cards in your hand all day is an obsession. Visiting print shops and bookstores and libraries is an obsession. And writing about this is an obsession. I think, in general, most collectors are obsessed. I think the only form of a rationalized greed is when you're collecting something you are supposedly serious about.
I like every part [of the film process ] except the business and admin stuff. The initial idea. Writing. Re-writing. Casting. Directing, Editing. If I had to chose I'd say writing, followed by putting music on the picture. That is magical.
There's nothing as perfect as the initial idea. And the only reason I write and direct is to protect the writing, because that's what's most precious.
Of all the disciplines involved in making anything - TV, film or anything I do - the writing is the most valuable commodity.
