Pastoral Resources

As you know from reading many of these Negro writers, we don't deal too much with the discussion of democracy and what it means and how improvisation fits in all that.

Our job as writers and thinkers in the time is how to bring about the occasions that let people have that first-person experience - or the metaphoric experience that allows them to see human continuity as opposed to total threat, total willingness to do violence.

Most writers like to maintain some sort of anonymity. For me, making videos was an assault.

Probably having fallen in love with music and movies at a young age and then first learning about writing by kind of following the path of writers like Dave Marsh and Lester Bangs and being a rock journalist.

It's always a mistake for writers to key their submissions to world events, because they move so quickly and unpredictably, as has certainly proven the case in Afghanistan.

The writers want to know were you made your mistake, no how well your curve is breaking.

I did what most writers do when something happens that's overwhelming, fascinating, moving, all of that. I didn't know what else to do about it except write about it.

American writers ought to stand and live in the margins, and be more dangerous.

I think more than writers, the major influences on me have been European movies, jazz, and Abstract Expressionism.

True terror is a language and a vision. There is a deep narrative structure to terrorist acts, and they infiltrate and alter consciousness in ways that writers used to aspire to.

Writers in repressive societies are considered dangerous. That's why so many of them are in jail.

There were five writers on Blazing Saddles.

There are some good songs, but not the kind of song-writing that I remember, that I like. Springsteen still does it. Paul Simon, and there are also good writers, but that doesn't dominate the charts.

When the band begins to get a name for themselves, and the writers get assigned to bands, they'll hit somebody who just doesn't like that kind of music, or they love hip hop but hate guitar rock.

Of course, all writers draw upon their personal experiences in describing day-to-day life and human relationships, but I tend to keep my own experiences largely separate from my stories.

The best way to learn about writing is to study the work of other writers you admire.

Writers are frequently asked why they wrote their first book. A more interesting answer might come from asking them why they wrote their second one.

I was a pretty good fighter. But it was the writers who made me great.

They're pretty particular about what they show. They certainly edit the scripts and have conversations with the writers about what they are and aren't willing to portray. But the writers and the network are pretty much on the same page.

The same issue is happening on a show like Everybody Loves Raymond now, which is in its eighth year and struggling to come up with good stories. It'll be interesting to see how they do. The bottom line is, it starts with the writers and ends with the writers.