They say that every writer, they write about himself, and I think that to a certain extent that is true. But also we are creators of fiction.
Crime fiction is a genre for writing stories about people - about conflict, about guilt, about passion, about the human condition.
I tell myself I write because I want to say something true and original about the nature of evil. That is very ambitious - to say something about the human condition that hasn't been written before. Probably I will never succeed but that is what I strive to do.
I think it's difficult, if you're a quite private person like I am, to write about your life very intimately.
When I settled to writing seriously, which would be in my 30s, I did expect to be published eventually, but my aspirations werent very high. A published book and a few appreciative readers was my idea of heaven.
Never believe that the fiction writing life makes sense.... It's insanity by definition.
That's the hard work of writing. The imagining.
Particularly in my early days, I did very little rewriting.
Greatest misconception about Wikipedia: We aren’t democratic. Our readers edit the entries, but we’re actually quite snobby. The core community appreciates when someone is knowledgeable, and thinks some people are idiots and shouldn’t be writing.
[Writing a joke] there is no team of writers. It's just you in an office, staring at yourself in the mirror.
I write songs on a universal basis. I was born out of the earth of Jamaica which I consider to be a part of Atlantis, the sunk continent, but that's my thing. But I write songs on a universal basis, not like Jamaican songs.
When I feel something very intensely or deeply or personally, I can go to extremes of self-expression or self-analysis by writing a poem - more than I can just talking to somebody or writing prose.
In general, in the matters that relate to theology or behavior, people to one another, Paul was obviously biblically correct. But when he said that women should always cover their hair or that women should not teach men, women should not have leadership positions in the church, women should not speak in the church, I don't' think that those writings of Paul can be extracted by themselves to stand alone. Also, Paul said that women should be subservient to their husbands but if you read a couple of verses down it says husbands should treat their wives as equals.
There are some discrepencies in the writings of Paul. Some Christians chose those ones that say that women should be restricted in their services. I choose to emphasize the equality of people in God's eyes.
Being president is as difficult as writing the perfect poem. And being president is as effortless as writing the perfect poem. Always a Reckoning, my first collection of poetry, was described by Booklist as 'keenly evocative.'
[Writing] is edit, edit, edit. It's almost like getting a boat ready to go to sea. You've still got a countless number of things left to fix, but you've just got to go, "O.K., everybody get on the boat. We're going, ready or not."
I guess it would be if I wanted to, just lay back and predominantly write songs when I can't go on a stage anymore.
I recently wrote a piece on comics in architecture - I was talking about the three kinds of comics I pay attention to: the Franco-Belgian, the Japanese manga, and the American comics. I started thinking about the relationship between Japanese manga and Japanese architecture, or Franco-Belgian bande dessinée versus Franco-Belgian architecture, it began to make sense; there are parallels to the modes of operations and the cultures they belong to. If I didn't force myself to write, I would have no forum to clarify these thoughts. Writing is really helpful.
It's important to write a mystery novel where the takeaway is not a giveaway - where something could be read over and over.
I've often thought I would like to try to write a conventional novel, but I just don't know enough about the real world to write one.
Cartoons are perhaps a bigger part of art than is generally realized, and they influence people in ways that are not always recognized. But creating a monumental work of architecture, or writing a great symphony, is something else. It's a higher order of creation.
The books that I do, the stories I write - I'm glad I'm able to do them, but they will quickly be swallowed up by the sands of time. Sometimes it frustrates me that I'm not able to do bigger, more important, more significant things. I guess you have to be content to do whatever it is you can do.
I could never write about the sort of people John Cheever or John Updike or even Margaret Atwood write about. I don't mean I couldn't write as well as they do, which of course I couldn't; they're great writers, and I'm no writer at all. But I couldn't even write badly about normal, neurotic people. I don't know that world from the inside. That's just not my orientation.
The fiction I tend to like is nothing like my own work. I like the kind of writing that shows me things I don't know about, and what I don't know about is the everyday, normal world.
I have a car business and if I had to do an estimate on my face, I would probably write it off.
