After that, I specifically started writing lyrics. I would like sweat and think and get it all together.

So the name of a group has to say something. The name has to be strong.

You have to have a strong title. It's got to say something.

We played at a club called, the Elbow Room. Don Carlos, the nightclub owner, was very hip and a very important person who made a big impact on my life.

Mr. Fantasy was the only song that was scribbling on a piece of paper.

This kind of music was just hitting England, so we were getting this following in clubs in Birmingham just cause we were trying to do something different.

They gave it to us for about five bucks a week, and we just went there to live. Probably the first band that ever did that back then and it became the famous cottage.

We all ended up jumping up and down, hugging each other when Ali won;cause Ali is the greatest.

I turned everybody on so, psychologically, I guess I was pushing the boundaries creativity.

For me, naming bands was the forerunner to really writing lyrics, because I work off titles.

I was half asleep lying there writing this lyric in my head at about 3:30 in the morning. I woke Steve up with this idea and then we went into the living room where there was a little upright piano and finished the song. I wonder where that piano is now?

After that, I specifically started writing lyrics. I would like sweat and think and get it all together.

There I met Gordon Jackson and Dave Meredith who were playing in local bands.

We loved everything. We wanted to be able to do anything.

You try to be moody when you're young and it had a good ring to it.

Far From Home was also my idea from a magazine I'd seen.

But then you have to write a song, so at that point, I picked up the reins and started to write lyrics.

Traffic was very, very free. It was great.

We all had a desire and appreciation for such a wide range of music.

You know, I had the ability like a catalyst to really get everybody hyped up.

I have to confess that a strong contributing factor was that I had just taken what was probably the first acid ever made, given to me by a guy called Johnny Fellows, who had just returned from America.

I have always had a tremendous amount of energy and any band I was ever in from the age of fourteen, I would always be the one who would describe the future and vibe everyone up.

Guys would hang out in groups just to be with the music.

Because I would just tell everyone it was going to be great and just put that belief in them.

This was an important part of my life. But it was also sad that we didn't play there, cause we had such alot of fans that were waiting for us and Brazilians are great people. It's now my second home.

Everything that Traffic ever did, I'd give Steve a complete lyric, titled, written out with the verse, the bridge, the shape and rhyme and then Steve had to figure out how the meter of the words would fit musically.

I think you do better when you are really up for it, cause passion goes up.

We all ended up jumping up and down, hugging each other when Ali won; cause Ali is the greatest.

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.

Every kind of book I've written has been written in a different way. There has not been any set time for writing, any set way, I haven't re-invented the process every time but I almost have.

Everything I've ever done, in the writing world, has been to expand articulation, rather than to close it.