We were very fortunate to have been on the scene when we were.

She could only write with him at night and she was wasting her days just sitting around. So he thought I could write with her during the day. And that was Carole King.

There is the great creative part of it. The writing is the best part.

That's what it is every time you walk into the room to write with someone new. It's like, oh god I have to take my clothes off 'my creative clothes' and let them see all of my flaws.

But I'm someone who the more afraid I am, the more I want to do it to get the fear over with.

My nature is to be linear, and when I'm not, I feel really proud of myself.

We were very fortunate to have been on the scene when we were.

Even when I think I'm writing really young, they say it's too mature.

The business today is completely different and it's very producer driven, so that a songwriter needs to have producing chops, be a singer/songwriter, or find a singer to develop.

You just have to believe in yourself when you've got something, and just keep pounding on the door, because if you pound long enough, somebody is going to open it.

We wrote what sounded good to us and hoped it would find a home.

A lot of guys spend their lives saying no because it's an easier way to keep your job.

I wanted to write for Broadway.

We are the yin and the yang of the creative process.

We all have fertile creative periods and times when we can't figure out how we ever did it.

That first writing session, what Dan Hill calls a creative blind date, is always a real challenge, and you bring that back to your partner when you return to writing with them.

Actually I was writing with people that didn't get records.

I can't seem to write young enough anymore.

Sharing a triumph with someone you love is an incredible high.

We have gone through some difficult times like everyone else and perhaps our working together and respecting each other's abilities, in addition to that little thing called love, helped us survive.

Barry and I were in the middle of building a house, and I was in the midst of having a nervous breakdown, because that's what you do when you build a house.

Although I like the work I've done in the past, I like what I'm writing now even more.

It was kind of like songwriter's boot camp. You had to produce. You had to produce fast. You had to learn.

You made a lot of mistakes, and you wrote a lot of crap. But it was all part of the learning process.

Barry is an incredible singer. He's even gotten better through the years.

The main reason he wanted to be a recording artist was because it gives you much more freedom in your writing. You only have to please the artist and the artist is you so you can be more daring and experimental.

On the other hand when you are someone who records their own songs you are basically stuck writing for one voice and for one style that can stifle you a bit. It's a real trade off.

My whole thing is I want to have a backup plan because maybe I won't get another acting job after 'Fame', maybe I'll want to give up on acting in five years or whatever and I want to have something else that I enjoy just as much as I enjoy acting.

Rejection is the sand in the oyster, the irritation that ultimately produces the pearl.

Men who do things without being told draw the most wages.

I've always liked a very dry snare and, like everyone else, a very dry bass drum.

Firefighter is one of the few jobs kind enough to warn me away by containing two words Im not interested in unlike the deceptive bookkeeper.

Palmares Tres is a society born out of a distinct, idiosyncratic utopian vision formed in the midst of an apocalypse. I would say the residents of Palmares Tres respect the strength of that history and their remarkable ability to rise from the ashes of the old world.

I think baking is an incredible thing; cooking in general is an incredible thing.

To create a new universal idea is to create a new star in the universe!

This is going to sound cheesy, but with acting there are so many tools. When you're on camera, you're using all of it. You're using the voice, you're using your body, you're using wardrobe, all of it, but it's funny, once you take all of those things away, you realize how much you rely on the physicality.

Our body is dependant on Heaven and Heaven on the Spirit.

The outstanding people realized that the job involved more than just writing a good strategic plan. It was also important that top management should understand the plan and be prepared to adopt it.

Sometimes you gotta leave when you're on top.

I don't like to watch my work after I do it because it just - I'll always look at the wrong things.

I never started out trying to be an actor. That was not my passion, this was not my thing.

Thank goodness modern convenience is a thing of the remote future.

It is always easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.

I know nothing about love and romance, so I prefer to stick to just comedy.

Romantic love is mental illness. But it's a pleasurable one.

If a woman is successful shed better duck because theyll be out to get her.

I was a nursery school teacher, and I worked with youth groups. I loved that job. It was exhausting, but you got a lot back - all their purity and insight and innocence is so on the surface, and they're so unrepressed; they'd really scream at you and then give you a massive kiss.

If you're fascinated by America, you'll be fascinated by family.

There's actually nothing interesting about me except what I write.