I usually write away from home in coffee shops on trains on planes in friends' houses. I like places where there's stuff going on that you can lift your eyes see something interesting overhear a conversation.

I would go to work from 9 to 6 go home nap for two hours then write from 8 to 2 a.m.

After my tour I had time to stay at home be with my boyfriend and hang out with friends and that brought me down to earth and helped me write music from a more relaxed place.

Stand-up is like a movie every night. You write it direct it produce it the audience votes and you go home. There's nothing more satisfying.

It's not a bad thing for a writer not to feel at home. Writers - we're much more comfortable at parties standing in the corner watching everybody else having a good time than we are mingling.

I got a lovely check today from being a writer that I earned by sitting at home. That's rewarding.

Since I was there in the very beginning I know the history of the characters. So I make comments about the tone and sometimes remind the writers that we've done that before.

In a country like France so ancient their history is full of outstanding people so they carry a heavy weight on their back. Who could write in French after Proust or Flaubert?

Gay writers now have both a sense of history and the fables that allows them to dwell in the realms of the ridiculous and at the same time talk seriously about things.

It seems disingenuous to ask a writer why she or he is writing about a violent subject when the world and history are filled with violence.

Every writer has his writing technique - what he can and can't do to describe something like war or history. I'm not good at writing about those things but I try because I feel it is necessary to write that kind of thing.

From Caesar's legions to the Napoleonic wars. From the Reformation the Enlightenment and the industrial revolution to the defeat of nazism. We have helped to write European history and Europe has helped write ours.

I want to write a book which is the history of comedy.

I sent American troops to Iraq to make its people free not to make them American. Iraqis will write their own history and find their own way.

The main thing is to make history not to write it.

Now there are some who would like to rewrite history - revisionist historians is what I like to call them.

The writer may very well serve a movement of history as its mouthpiece but he cannot of course create it.

One could write a history of science in reverse by assembling the solemn pronouncements of highest authority about what could not be done and could never happen.

For my part I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history especially as I propose to write that history myself.

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

I think it's time to have a celebration of life and renew our vows. And this time we're going to write the vows because they're going to mean a lot more. We certainly put the 'in sickness and in health' vow to the test the last year and half.

Whenever I write about mental health and integrative therapies I am accused of being prejudiced against pharmaceuticals. So let me be clear - integrative medicine is the judicious application of both conventional and evidence-based natural therapies.

Think of an economy where people could be an artist or a photographer or a writer without worrying about keeping their day job in order to have health insurance.

Happiness for me is getting to write about the most important things I know.