This notice noisily arrived on my iPhone today: Public Safety Alert The County of LA is ordering another curfew from 6pm tonight to 6am Read More...
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I have a structured songwriting process. I start with the music and try to come up with musical ideas, then the melody, then the hook, and the lyrics come last.
It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous.
When writing a novel, that’s pretty much entirely what life turns into: “House burned down. Car stolen. Cat exploded. Did 1,500 easy words, so all in all it was a pretty good day.”
Reading and weeping opens the door to one’s heart, but writing and weeping opens the window to one’s soul.
Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any.
A true author, no matter the medium, is an artist with godlike knowledge of his subject, and the proof of his authorship is that his pages smack of authority.
I get up in the morning, torture a typewriter until it screams, then stop.
If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it’s to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel.
Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader’s intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.
Socially, a journalist fits in somewhere between a whore and a bartender. But spiritually he stands beside Galileo. He knows the world is round.
What I loved most about calling myself a reporter was that it gave me an excuse to show up anyplace.
You may be able to take a break from writing, but you won’t be able to take a break from being a writer.
I do not over-intellectualize the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the damned story.
























