When I'm writing for a book, it's much more reflective process. I have certain things that may not translate well to the stage, but, when they're on the page, people can really get into them. My first two books were aiming to be funnier, but the third was more about deep exploration. Things about being a parent and growing older that I thought would be perfect for a book.
Life is but one continual course of instruction. The hand of the parent writes on the heart of the child the first faint characters which time deepens into strength so that nothing can efface them.
As a comedian, I'm like one of those on-the-scene reporters. I will actually go and try to find disasters so I can write jokes as the disasters unfold.
There's very little of the intentional about the business of writing poetry, as least as far as I can see.
What I try to do is to go into a poem - and one writes them, of course, poem by poem - to go into each poem, first of all without having any sense whatsoever of where it's going to end up
It's not as if I'm trying to write crossword puzzles to which one might find an answer at the back of the book or anything like that.
Letters are meaningless unless put together correctly. Words are worthless unless backed by truth. Sentences are handed out and judged accordingly, but only genuinely honest men or women can create writings that change the world forever.
I think a domestic situation can change you and your attitudes. I suppose if you did get a bit content, then you might not write savage lyrics.
I'm not into, Hey, what's your sign? or any of that. But I don't know how I got here, and I don't know how I write songs. I don't know why I breathe.
People think once you get famous and rich you move out of the public sphere and you have nothing left to write about. I've heard that - Bruce Springsteen was this real street boy, now he's got this big house. How does that compute? If you don't look at the material side of someone's life, if you look at more the emotional side, there's always a wealth of stuff to write about.
Every love song I write is for Linda.
Domesticity is the enemy of art. I don't know if that's true. You can write good happy songs. So, I don't think it's necessarily happiness. But I think self-satisfaction is maybe the enemy. It's kind of better to think, "Tomorrow night I'm gonna sing it better." There is this forward effort. It feels to me right, it feels human.
I think when you're making an album, as the songs are piling up, one of the good things about it is that you will often write the song that you need.
I'm always writing songs, and I've got a bunch that I want to record.
I just start singing some words with a tune. I don't ever write a song thinking, Now I'll write a song about... .
Sometimes when you write a thing you think, 'Oh, this is good', and it's not a modesty or an immodesty thing, you just... it's just the same with anything; when you write a piece you just figure, 'Oh yeah, I'm on a roll here. This is good; I'm getting the hang of this'. Some pieces are better than others.
But with writers, there's nothing wrong with melancholy. It's an important color in writing.
John could write a mean song. He had a lot of venom in him. Whereas I had a happy childhood.
There are two things John and I always do when we're going to sit down and write a song. First of all we sit down. Then we think about writing a song.
I need my trusty Mac laptop to write. I can't work with anything else. I'm used to the feel of the keys. I also like, more than anything else, Apple's Pages.
I find that jazz loosens up the deep place of my mind, lets me find my own strange rhythms. Generally, I find the knottier the jazz, the better. Anything with singing is a distraction. Listening to classical music tends to have the unconscious effect of making my writing too smooth.
I think the most reliable way to teach it is through reading work aloud over and over. Many prose writers been encouraged to do that, but that might be changing. Denise was the one who taught me to develop my ear. I never knew how to listen to writing until she started reading her work to me.
Sometimes I can listen to music - sometimes there's no choice, especially if I'm out writing at a coffee place. But sometimes it's too distracting. If I'm listening to something I really love - I have to stop and give everything over to it. I'm listening to its structures, its melodic lines, the bass. It takes up too much of my head - in a good way.
I never thought that I would write orchestra music, but in fact I did write a group of orchestra pieces.
I came up in the '60s; that was a time when there was a revolution going on in music. Stravinsky had become a twelve-tone composer; even Aaron Copland was writing twelve-tone pieces at that time!
