Writers rush in where publishers fear to tread and where translators fear to tread.

There's so much fear involved in trying to do something you don't know how to do that drugs and alcohol can become a big part of your life if you have an addictive personality or are very unsure which most songwriters are.

I could write an entertaining novel about rejection slips but I fear it would be overly long.

More than fantasy or even science fiction Ray Bradbury wrote horror and like so many great horror writers he was himself utterly without fear of anything. He wasn't afraid of looking uncool - he wasn't scared to openly love innocence or to be optimistic or to write sentimentally when he felt that way.

A writer of fiction lives in fear. Each new day demands new ideas and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not.

I always say three things make a writer: inspiration obviously perspiration doing the work. But the third is desperation. I'm not really fit for anything else or to have a real job. That fear drives me. The pressure has always been self inflicted.

Yet it ought to be obvious that good music generally occupies a higher plane that mere politics. Great writers can express moods through melody and capture experiences we share most powerfully - love lust longing joy rage fear triumph yearning and confusion.

I never discuss a novel while I'm writing it for fear that talking about it will diminish my desire to write it.

I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking what I'm looking at what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.

I write for those women who do not speak for those who do not have a voice because they were so terrified because we are taught to respect fear more than ourselves. We've been taught that silence would save us but it won't.

I was set free because my greatest fear had been realized and I still had a daughter who I adored and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

Writing is a form of therapy sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write compose or paint can manage to escape the madness melancholia the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.

The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.

The big thing that everyone forgets you're famous and on TV and everything but I think there's something very rewarding to be able to write a song record it and have it turn out as you heard it in your head or even better.

When I was in fourth grade... this wonderful teacher said you didn't have to write a book report you could just talk about the book you could do a drawing of the book you could write a play inspired by the book and that's what I did. I got to be so famous. I had to go around to every school and perform it. It was just so natural and fun.

My office walls are covered with autographs of famous writers - it's what my children call my 'dead author wall.' I have signatures from Mark Twain Earnest Hemingway Jack London Harriett Beecher Stowe Pearl Buck Charles Dickens Rudyard Kipling Alfred Lord Tennyson to name a few.

I think there are a lot more writers who are actors than you know they just don't have roles on famous TV shows that you recognize.

I heard so many stories from Gaomi's peasants that I had an irrepressible urge to write them down. Today Gaomi's peasants know that they have become famous around the world through my writings but I think they are a little puzzled by this.

I don't want to be famous per se but I want to write books for as long as I can. And I plan on writing a lot.

Being famous as a writer is like being famous in a village. It's not really any very heady fame.

I really had little interest in becoming famous. When I write my book it will be my guide to avoid becoming a rock star.

I may not be the most famous songwriter in the world but you know a David Friedman song when you hear it. It took me a long time to appreciate that.

I was a shy kid but somehow I knew I would make it as a performer. I'd always be telling my mum that I was going to be a famous singer. In my school yearbooks I would write 'Remember me when I'm famous.' I knew I had a gift.

Our most famous writers are Faulkner and Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor. It would make sense that the poetry would reflect some of those same values some of the same techniques.