I understand that computers which I once believed to be but a hermaphrodite typewriter-cum-filing cabinet offer the cyber literate increased ability to communicate. I do not think this is altogether a bad thing however it may appear on the surface.

Being a good television screenwriter requires an understanding of the way film accelerates the communication of words.

By and large the critics and readers gave me an affirmed sense of my identity as a writer. You might know this within yourself but to have it affirmed by others is of utmost importance. Writing is after all a form of communication.

Here I am paying big money to you writers and what for? All you do is change the words.

We like to think about how smart we are. But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in it's all there at least the basic elements of it. You can't change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.

But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in it's all there at least the basic elements of it. You can't change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.

I think the true test of a pop song for me and I've talked to a lot of other writers about this is you take your demo you pop it in your car and you drive down Sunset Blvd. to Santa Monica and that's the Hollywood car test.

One thing that worried me was how writers get categorized and so they end up having to write the same kind of book again and again. That is fine if it is what you want to do but I would rather be locked in the trunk of my car with a weasel than write the same book every three years until I die.

If you are a writer you locate yourself behind a wall of silence and no matter what you are doing driving a car or walking or doing housework you can still be writing because you have that space.

I think a lot of writers male and female write as if their parents were killed in a car accident when they were 2 and they have no one to hold accountable. And unfortunately I don't have that. I have parents who I care about what they think.

I have several writer friends but I don't involve them in my work process. I'm more likely to talk about the business of publishing with them.

I've never seen a worse situation than that of young writers in the United States. The publishing business in North America is so commercialized.

I learned what I really love is making films not the film business. I want to be on the set meeting with writers I want that freedom. I love it now.

The stores and the things like that the business side of things came out at the point when I'd say probably in the early '70s it looked like the year of the singer-songwriter was over 'cause music changed in our time and the spotlight was out.

When a book leaves your hands it belongs to God. He may use it to save a few souls or to try a few others but I think that for the writer to worry is to take over God's business.

I have pretty thick skin and I think if you're going to be in this business if you're going to be an actor or a writer you better have a thick skin.

After I left the White House I kept a foothold in the business of American politics as a talk-show host analyst commentator speechmaker and occasional writer. I was no longer a practitioner but I was still a partisan a Democrat a blue-stater through and through.

I am a sensitive writer actor and director. Talking business disgusts me. If you want to talk business call my disgusting personal manager.

The best writing is not about the writer the best writing is absolutely not about the writer it's about us it's about the reader.

Being fired was the best luck of my life. It made me stop and reflect. It was the birth of my life as a writer.

Townes van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that.

I know I'm not the best. I'm not the best singer I'm not the best songwriter I'm not the best player.

The waste basket is the writer's best friend.

You hear the best stories from ordinary people. That sense of immediacy is more real to me than a lot of writerly literary-type crafted stories. I want that immediacy when I read a novel.