I mean there are some amazing storytelling being done on the small screen right now. That's what so cool about being in television right now. Studios networks are starting to throw more resources better writers more production values... and to be part of that is awesome.

It's been a fascinating thing because we didn't really know how to write when we started South Park at all. It's been like we've just sort of grown up a bit and it's amazing to just see how if you take Butters and Cartman and put them in any scene it works.

I'll tell you Quentin Tarantino really writes the most amazing dialogue.

Twitter is the most amazing medium for a comedy writer. I can't get in every idea I want on the show no matter how hard I try to bully the other writers so it's a way of me getting out other comic ideas and immediately getting feedback.

I kicked the door open and I'm gonna hold my leg in there. I'm keeping the door open for all these amazing female singer-songwriters that are coming out.

I'd love to write something for a male protagonist. That's sort of the next frontier for me. I think it'd be really amazing to write the kind of parts that I love for women but for a guy.

At that time I had recently finished a book called Amazing Grace which many people tell me is a very painful book to read. Well if it was painful to read it was also painful to write. I had pains in my chest for two years while I was writing that book.

President Clinton signed a $10 million deal to write a book by 2003. Isn't that amazing? Yes and get this not only that President Bush signed a $10 million deal to read a book by 2003.

Half a century ago the amazing courage of Rosa Parks the visionary leadership of Martin Luther King and the inspirational actions of the civil rights movement led politicians to write equality into the law and make real the promise of America for all her citizens.

I mean we've built a lot of products that we think are good and will help people share photos and share videos and write messages to each other. But it's really all about how people are spreading Facebook around the world in all these different countries. And that's what's so amazing about the scale that it's at today.

It's amazing if you know what you want to say how fast it is to write.

Write in recollection and amazement for yourself.

She can't even chew gum and walk in a straight line let alone write a book.

Largely this is a class thing - writers tend to be cosseted little middle-class kiddies who think that the world owes them a royalty cheque. But just doing it - being in your room for years on end locked in your head alone with invented ghosts - it weakens and softens the body. And I know I can't just live in my head.

I have Graham Greene's telephone number but I wouldn't dream of using it. I don't seek out writers because we all want to be alone.

I can't write without a reader. It's precisely like a kiss - you can't do it alone.

Anyone who writes knows that ultimately the majority of your time is spent alone in a room with a piano or a guitar no matter what the project is.

The secret to being a writer is that you have to write. It's not enough to think about writing or to study literature or plan a future life as an author. You really have to lock yourself away alone and get to work.

It's very hard to write a song alone. It's only by jamming that you can get a song together.

I like singer-songwriters and I find sad songs comforting rather than depressing. It makes you realise you're not alone in the world.

People love pretty much the same things best. A writer looking for subjects inquires not after what he loves best but after what he alone loves at all.

Writing is a solitary occupation. Family friends and society are the natural enemies of the writer. He must be alone uninterrupted and slightly savage if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking.

As a child I wanted only two things - to be left alone to read my library books and to get away from my provincial hometown and go to London to be a writer. And I always knew that when I got there I wanted to make loads of money.

Writers may be disreputable incorrigible early to decay or late to bloom but they dare to go it alone.