Writing was not a childhood dream of mine. I do not recall longing to write as a student. I wasn't sure how to start.
As you get older you're told to be sensible, but it's important for writing if you're a comic that you're able to still access that childlike thing.
I grew up with my little brother, and we were raised by my grandmother. I was an insider for real. I stayed in the house a lot, writing songs or playing video games, watching TV, or chilling with my girlfriend.
The only way I seem to be able to keep going while I'm writing is to munch my way through boxes of chocolates.
When I was young, I just sat down and started playing Chopsticks at the piano. I got so far and then lost interest. Eventually, I regained it and started writing songs.
I have fun writing. I don't make it a chore. I don't have to struggle with it.
I like writing different types of music. I like writing Christian music. I like collaborating with Christian artists. We have a Christian following. I love writing kids' music.
Writing songs is about trying to connect with people on a deeper spiritual level - but I'm not a fan of contemporary Christian music.
While writing 'Half of a Yellow Sun,' I enjoyed playing with minor things: inventing a train station in a town that has none, placing towns closer to each other than they are, changing the chronology of conquered cities. Yet I did not play with the central events of that time.
There is more good writing and good acting in any ten minutes of Twister than in, say, all of Citizen Kane.
I discovered Orson Welles in college; my freshman English professor screened 'Citizen Kane' for us, and I wound up writing a 20-page term paper on it.
The purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure pure reasoning, and inhibit clarity. With a little practice, writing can be an intimidating and impenetrable fog!
Jimmy McGovern - I love his writing, and I'm a big fan of him and Alan Clarke.
I studied classical guitar in school, and that type of stuff has led to writing for Kronos.
When I read Toni Morrison and Sandra Cisneros as a freshman at Rutgers, it all clicked - that writing was all I wanted to do. It became my calling.
At least half my writing time is spent researching. So for every hour I'm actually clicking on the keyboard, I'm spending another hour trying to figure out some tiny detail I need answered.
Art is the provocation for talking about enigma and the search for sense in human life. One can do that by telling a story or writing about a fresco by Giotto or studying how a snail climbs up a wall.
I'm a natural clown, I suppose, in writing, and one has to accept that; I can't do anything about it. I have written one or two novels which are not specifically funny. I wrote a study of Shakespeare which was not intended to be funny, but some people regard it as such.
Mistaken identity, of course, has been the province of much postcolonial fiction. An important feature of this writing is the manner in which misrecognition has haunted all cognition.
I fell in love with the idea of writing songs when I was a child. I thought I was going to be a journalist at first, but I gradually fell in love with all these great writers like Irving Berlin and Cole Porter, who were at the peak of their powers then.
