If they had said my writing wasn't good enough fair enough that's an opinion. But to say it's too complex is to insult the intelligence of the so-called young.

Writing a novel is not merely going on a shopping expedition across the border to an unreal land: it is hours and years spent in the factories the streets the cathedrals of the imagination.

Suddenly the whole imagination of writing and editorial and newspaper and all these presumptions about who am I reading this and who else other people may be and all that it's so grimly brutal!

Imagination it turns out is a great deal like reporting in your own head. Here is a paradox of fiction-writing. You are crafting something from nothing which means in one sense that none of it is true. Yet in the writing and perhaps in the reading some of a character's actions or lines are truer than others.

Writing gives me the opportunity to explore ideas play with language solve problems use my imagination and draw on my own childhood.

Writing poetry is the hard manual labor of the imagination.

'Castle' is a guy living in a fantasy world. He's in his imagination writing these stories of murder.

My greatest strength as a child I realize now was my imagination. While every other kid was reading and writing I had seven whole hours a day to practice my imagination. When do you get that space in your life ever?

I regard the writing of humor as a supreme artistic challenge.

I certainly didn't say while writing 'Gossip Girl ' 'Oh this is going to be big!' It was really like 'Oh god everyone's gong to hate these people! They're so bratty!' But I actually think what is so appealing about them is the humor in them.

I am in the Master of Professional Writing program teaching Humor Writing Literary and Dramatic.

But if you read Jane Austen you know that she had a wicked sense of humor. Not only was she funny but her early writing was very dark and had a gothic tone to it.

Some major writers have a huge impact like Ayn Rand who to my mind is a lousy fiction writer because her writing has no compassion and virtually no humor. She has a philosophical and economical message that she is passing off as fiction but it really isn't fiction at all.

My humor tends to be a little more edgy than is appropriate for 'Twilight ' although I got some in there. That was fun! There's just a tonal difference. For me storytelling is storytelling. But I do like writing for grown ups.

At the risk of appearing disingenuous I don't really think of myself as 'writing humor.' I'm simply reporting on the world I observe which is frequently hilarious.

I'm sure there are people who survive tragedy without humor but I've never met any of them. Nor would I be particularly interested in writing about them if I did meet them.

When I look at a lot of older stuff that I've written I think one sign of amateur humor writing is when you see people trying too hard.

Writing a novel is one of those modern rites of passage I think that lead us from an innocent world of contentment drunkenness and good humor to a state of chronic edginess and the perpetual scanning of bank statements.

Writing a song is much like being an author. Yes we all have tools to write (everyone has a brain I hope!) but that doesn't all of a sudden make us best selling authors.

I hope to continue writing. I hope to continue teaching.

I don't remember deciding to become a writer. You decide to become a dentist or a postman. For me writing is like being gay. You finally admit that this is who you are you come out and hope that no one runs away.

If someone decides to be a musician now it means because there is no hope of money at the end of it it means they really want to be a musician. And if someone is writing now there is no hope for money at the end of it.

You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.

I've tried to reduce profanity but I reduced so much profanity when writing the book that I'm afraid not much could come out. Perhaps we will have to consider it simply as a profane book and hope that the next book will be less profane or perhaps more sacred.