I certainly derived my skills as a prose writer from my scrutiny of poetry and of the individual word. But schools don't do things like that anymore - tracking words down to their roots.

France is not poetic she even feels in fact a congenital horror of poetry. Among the writers who use verse those whom she will always prefer are the most prosaic.

As an actor there is room for a certain amount of creativity but you're always ultimately going to be saying somebody else's words. I don't think I'd have the stamina skill or ability to write a novel but I'd love to write short stories and poetry because those are my two passions.

Write verse not poetry. The public wants verse. If you have a talent for poetry then don't by any means mother it but try your hand at verse.

I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry but a kind of instinct or inspiration such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.

We all write poems it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words.

Everyone thinks they're going to write one book of poems or one novel.

One of my biggest pet peeves is that I just don't like it when characters do things that are funny to the writer but you don't know why they're doing it and it doesn't make any sense.

There are people all over the world who like to write fan letters in the voice of their pet: 'Hello my name is Fifi and I'm a labrador and I think you're great. Paw paw!'

I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat.

On Memorial Day I don't want to only remember the combatants. There were also those who came out of the trenches as writers and poets who started preaching peace men and women who have made this world a kinder place to live.

I cannot imagine any writer who would not fight for his peace and quiet.

I just can't seem to write songs about peace and love. Yeah right how do you get that?

To be misunderstood can be the writer's punishment for having disturbed the reader's peace. The greater the disturbance the greater the possibility of misunderstanding.

As a young boy I read 'Cheaper by the Dozen' and immediately became neurotic about my use of time. It taxed me severely but only for the next 50 years. But I think it also allowed me to discipline myself to sit in the chair and be a writer where one of the most needed qualities is patience.

I have a huge respect for writers and realise that this is not an area that I find easy. I doubt that I would have the patience in front of a blank sheet of paper to become a writer.

As for goals I don't set myself those anymore. I'm not one of these 'I must have achieved this and that by next year' kind of writers. I take things as they come and find that patience and persistence tend to win out in the end.

Do you want to be an artist and a writer or a wife and a lover? With kids your focus changes. I don't want to go to PTA meetings.

I never sort of thought of myself as a comedy writer by nature.

What a book a devil's chaplain might write on the clumsy wasteful blundering low and horribly cruel work of nature!

I've only been to Ireland once and I felt I would wake up with voices in my head almost like music and that if I were a songwriter I would be very inspired.

I write music with an exclamation point!

I don't write poems and put them to music. Just let things flow.

I always want to write erotic music... Not only about the love between men and women but in a much more universal sense - about the sensuality of the mechanism of the universe... about life.