You can get stale writing with each other for a while.

There's so much fear involved in trying to do something you don't know how to do that drugs and alcohol can become a big part of your life if you have an addictive personality or are very unsure, which most songwriters are.

You're going to have more rejection than acceptance.

I've written songs sober and I've written songs high.

If we didn't get the record, we didn't exist.

Probably most successful songwriters have an innate songwriting ability.

One other thing, if it's possible, as songwriters, you should also develop yourself as record producers.

A guitar riff played on a piano doesn't come close to the purity of it being played on a guitar but I faked it enough to get by.

If I waited for inspiration every time I sat down to write a song I probably would be a plumber today.

I know at the beginning of our careers, my wife and I were gut wrenchingly competitive.

You've got to really be able to accept the rejection.

I quit college. I was studying architecture for about a year.

We lived, ate, and breathed pop songs.

You can get stale writing with each other for a while.

We became the songs we wrote.

If we were the team that won out, then life was good and we felt that we were worth something.

You have certain writing tools but generally creating something from nothing makes one quite mad and Cynthia and I are quite mad you know.

I also used to work in the Catskill Mountains as a bus boy, and I performed in talent shows.

I get a different kind of lyric from someone else that might make me go in a different musical direction.

I looked through our catalog year by year, and I saw that there were pockets of time when we wrote some terrific songs. Then all of a sudden, we'd go for another two or three months and there weren't great songs.

It's very hard to teach someone how to write a song if to begin with there's no creative crop to harvest.

We've written something like 900 songs in all.

I think that most writers who wait until they're inspired to write are just waiting for the fear to subside.

You have to be very brave in that first writing session.

It's amazing how a competitive nature can turn a negative into something positive.

It's very important, at least for me and for Cynthia, to get outside input.

The real danger of writing a great song when you're on something is that it might get you thinking that the only way to repeat that is by only writing when you're high.

Cynthia's lyrics always expressed the feelings people felt but they couldn't express themselves.

I think if one wants to be in a continual state of insanity one should stay married to that writing partner.

A guitar riff played on a piano doesnt come close to the purity of it being played on a guitar but I faked it enough to get by.

Even when I'm writing plays I enjoy having company and mentally I think of that company as the company I'm writing for.

My singing is my hobby. It's me and my brother. We just enjoy writing music.

I don't know if there is any one secret to successful writing, but one important step is to move beyond imitation and discover what you can write that no one else can - that is, find out who you are and write that in an appropriate narrative and style.

That music and the lyrical aspects of Razorblade Romance is so personal to me that, now with me being grown up a bit and meeting new people and doing new things, it makes me look at the same things I was writing about back in the day through a different colored lens.

As a member of this court I am not justified in writing my private notions of policy into the Constitution, no matter how deeply I may cherish them or how mischievous I may deem their disregard.

I did know that the book would end with a mind-boggling trial, but I didn't know exactly how it would turn out. I like a little suspense when I am writing, too.

For me, writing is a concentrated form of thinking.

Writing allows me the time to travel and see the world, which is what I always wanted to do. I'd really like to have been Sir Richard Francis Burton, but it's the wrong century.

I've written many extra verses to songs that I learned to sing - an extra verse about a friend, or just add some verse - and that led to writing my own songs.

Book writing is a little different because, in my case, my editor is a year younger than me and basically has the same sensibility as me.

Writing is a dog's life, but the only life worth living.

I never see a novel as a film while I'm writing it. Mostly because novels and films are so different, and I'm such an internal novelist.

I look for ambiguity when I'm writing because life is ambiguous.

Maybe I spent more time dwelling on emotions than some people, and maybe that's why I ended up writing.

Writing songs has a therapeutic effect, and it either kills off love or wins the heart of the lover.

Writing novels is the most exciting.

That has to remain the principal reason for doing it, doesn't it? I know it's possible to write for money, and many very good writers have done so. But for me, it has to remain the principal thing that I actually want to do the writing.

Now I'm kind of established as a director, I much prefer directing to writing.

Writing, overall, has never been what I'd call fun. It's fulfilling. It doesn't come real easy for me.