I could speak Spanish fluently growing up but I'm so out of practice and I have such a tremendous respect for songwriting in the Spanish language.

Writing can sometimes be exploitative. I like to take a few steps of remove in order to respect the privacy of the subject. If readers make the link they have engaged with the poem.

Writing for children is bloody difficult books for children are as complex as their adult counterparts and they should therefore be accorded the same respect.

Writing fiction has developed in me an abiding respect for the unknown in a human lifetime and a sense of where to look for the threads how to follow how to connect find in the thick of the tangle what clear line persists.

I respect country music because I feel like it's more about the talent and the songwriting and I put on a big show and we have a lot of stuff but I feel confident in myself enough as an artist and a singer that I can have all of those fun toys and know that we don't need all the bells and whistles either.

The songs keep on writing themselves and I really love them. It's as close as I get to a religion.

What I miss today more than anything else - I don't go to church as much anymore - but that old-time religion that old singing that old praying which I love so much. That is the great strength of my being of my writing.

I also don't have organized religion on Pern. I figured - since there were four holy wars going on at the time of writing - that religion was one problem Pern didn't need.

When I'm not writing I read loads of fiction but I've been writing quite constantly lately so I've been reading a lot of nonfiction - philosophy religion science history social or cultural studies.

The problem with writing about religion is that you run the risk of offending sincerely religious people and then they come after you with machetes.

I was writing short films and I was going through this really really really terrible end of a relationship that I didn't want to be going through. It was too much for me to process and all of a sudden I had this idea for my first feature film and I knew right away I had to start writing it.

My relationship with Music Row has always been from my end optimistic and hopeful that there is more than one way to approach the writing recording and marketing of an album.

Whether you're keeping a journal or writing as a meditation it's the same thing. What's important is you're having a relationship with your mind.

Writing is my obsession my passion. My relationship with it is one of the most complex and agonizing and richly vexing that I have in my life.

When I was confronted with official tuition the academic thing I could see no relationship whatever between that and the music I'd been writing since I was 11.

When writing comedy you have to have the confidence to believe that there is only one type of relationship in the world and we are all having it that all men behave in the same way and so do all women.

People don't really have a relationship with great writing or great production or great art direction or great direction. They just sort of admire it.

What I do believe is that there is always a relationship between writing and reading a constant interplay between the writer on the one hand and the reader on the other.

For me writing is a love-hate relationship.

Most critical writing is drivel and half of it is dishonest. It is a short cut to oblivion anyway. Thinking in terms of ideas destroys the power to think in terms of emotions and sensations.

'Thank you power' is writing down the moments that are good in your life so that you can go back and reflect on them - so you've got this sort of repository of good stuff in your past.

I was totally absorbed in the real world the politics the history the news and I just couldn't find my way into the fictional world... When I finally could return to writing the novel it was in fits and starts.

I first came to think about media and politics in the late 1960s having observed some distortions up close but since then I wouldn't say that my personal experience has remained an important motive for my writing about media.

I'm not taking any interest in politics. I'm not involved in politics in any way. My life is in writing now.