The need to write comes from the need to make sense of one's life and discover one's usefulness.

The desire to write grows with writing.

I wrote seven Myron Bolitar novels in a row and I never want to write a Myron book where he just solves a crime. Every one of them I want to be personal and I want him to grow and change. The problem with that is it makes the series limited you can't write a series where a guy is always going through some kind of crisis.

I don't write for any group. I write to bring about a change in consciousness.

If you continually write and read yourself as a fiction you can change what's crushing you.

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.

In the back of your mind when you say you want to write music for the movies you're saying that you want a big house a big car and a boat. If you just wanted to write music you could live in Kansas and do it.

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.

I love Lady Antebellum and Miranda Lambert - they write from the heart. But it's hard to find a country music lover in L.A. None of my friends really listen to it and they hate getting in the car with me because I just blast Taylor Swift.

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.

Anyone can write a story based on the kind of horror where you see a guy in car and then there's the bad guy in the back seat. It's infantile to rely on that for telling a story. That's like going to bed and thinking there's a monster under your bed. It's silly.

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.

The first real thought that I had of something that I might do was to write for car magazines because I always had a car thing.

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.

I had no idea that he was going to write that but I've always believed that insecurity was what would keep you always in your innocence no matter what the business did.

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.

There is a growing literature about the multitude of journalism's problems but most of it is concerned with the editorial side of the business possibly because most people competent to write about journalism are not comfortable writing about finance.

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.