Because if one is writing novels today concentrating on the beauty of the prose is right up there with concentrating on your semi-colons for wasted effort.

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful for beauty is God's handwriting.

My attitude to writing is like when you do wallpapering you remember where all the little bits are that don't meet. And then your friends say: It's terrific!

On 'Van Halen ' I was a young punk and everything revolved around the fastest kid in town gunslinger attitude. But I'd say that at the time of 'Fair Warning ' I started concentrating more on songwriting. But I guess in most people's minds I'm just a gunslinger.

It has taken me years of struggle hard work and research to learn to make one simple gesture and I know enough about the art of writing to realize that it would take as many years of concentrated effort to write one simple beautiful sentence.

It's a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it.

There are so many opportunities in life that the loss of two or three capabilities is not necessarily debilitating. A handicap can give you the opportunity to focus more on art writing or music.

I love doing normal things - movies shopping going out with friends writing reading taking hot bubble baths - that's a big one for relaxation. I also love to go to art and history museums.

Artists don't talk about art. Artists talk about work. If I have anything to say to young writers it's stop thinking of writing as art. Think of it as work.

The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.

Writing is truly a creative art - putting word to a blank piece of paper and ending up with a full-fledged story rife with character and plot.

Not to say people shouldn't get rich from art. I adore the alchemy wherein artists who cast a complex spell make rich people give them their money. (Just writing it makes me cackle.) But too many artists have been making money without magic.

It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it.

True ease in writing comes from art not chance as those who move easiest have learned to dance.

Science fiction is any idea that occurs in the head and doesn't exist yet but soon will and will change everything for everybody and nothing will ever be the same again. As soon as you have an idea that changes some small part of the world you are writing science fiction. It is always the art of the possible never the impossible.

If you do not breathe through writing if you do not cry out in writing or sing in writing then don't write because our culture has no use for it.

I would fix other people's lines if they asked me on occasion. The hard part of writing is the architecture of it getting the story and structuring it. Not the tweaking of lines.

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.

I mean certainly writing painting photography dance architecture there is an aspect of almost every art form that is useful and that merges into film in some way.

I use the music to vent and a lot of the stuff that I am writing about or was writing about contained a lot of anger and anxiety stress and depression so that's how the album came out so dark.

The reason why I love people and writing about them is because they don't always respond with hate and anger. If they did I wouldn't have a story to tell. Who wants to know about someone who was brutalised and became brutal? I'm interested in the exceptions.

I did not think that I was angry but clearly anger was reflected in my writing. I did not think that I had been affected emotionally but it was clear from my writing that I was still very emotional about the trial some six months after it ended.

I think that we're in a really amazing time where there are really a lot of really fantastic female actresses and comedians. I imagine there's just a lot of opportunity for women to have powerful roles. Or it's just that there's more women writing TV. Women tend to maybe write strong women.

It's amazing to me that people have any interest in such a low-level sex scandal. If I were sleeping with a congressman maybe but I'm a nobody and the people I'm writing about are nobodies.