I was burned out. I think I was just exhausted. It was a very intense five years. We didn't stop. It was constant touring, constant writing, recording.

It's a nonstop schedule, really. I had lost myself somewhere.

When you're in a band that's so big when you're young, you kind of lose your identity a little bit. You just become part of the band. I just needed to get away from it.

It was great fun. We had gone on tour in between the sessions and reconnected with the audience and got a lot of energy back from them, a lot of positive energy.

I was burned out. I think I was just exhausted. It was a very intense five years. We didn't stop. It was constant touring, constant writing, recording.

Some people even went off to form another band, Power Station.

We're very lucky to be able to go back and reclaim something that was a very special part of all our lives.

I guess when we were up against it, we knew this album was going to be compared to all the classic early material, because it was going back to the original five.

You never know how you're going to be received, after all this time. The initial response we had was just overwhelming, particularly that tour of the States.

Everybody was on the same page. Nobody has really gone out there on a different musical journey. When we got back together again, we all wanted to do the same kind of music.

I lived a normal life for a number of years. I had kids. I lived up on a farm in Gloucestershire in rural England, and just kind of got back to reality again.

It's amazing to see places like Madison Square Garden on the schedule again.

Nick and Simon had come to a natural end of their working relationship with Warren, which obviously opened the door for a reunion of the original five.

As Andy says, being in this band in the early 1980s made you feel like you were part of a pizza. We were always one of the band, one of Duran Duran, or one of the Taylors.

I like Target. I like the ones in the Midwest, personally. We don't really have those in England yet.

Sometimes the problem is not the people in the band, but the people around the band.

The bar was very high-we had to really make sure that we got what we really wanted, that it was a real finished album. We weren't going to give up until we got that.

Seven and the Ragged Tiger took six months to record and finish.

I slowly started to drift back into music again. I finally got the call from John... about getting the band back together again. It was so out of the blue. I almost thought that the moment had passed.

We still seem to trigger that intensity in people, which was quite incredible.

At some of the venues, the audience was so loud we could hardly hear what was happening on stage, which kind of threw us back to 1983, when we had very similar reactions on a much bigger scale.

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.

And that's what I've learned too: writing is key.

Send it to someone who can publish it. And if they won't publish it, send it to someone else who can publish it! And keep sending it! Of course, if no one will publish it, at that point you might want to think about doing something other than writing.

But then I go through long periods where I don't listen to things, usually when I'm working. In between the records and in between the writing I suck up books and music and movies and anything I can find.

Life sometimes gets in the way of writing.

We were given clear concrete tools. The course did a great job demystifying the art of fiction writing and fostering confidence. The instructor brought complex concepts down to earth. I will miss coming here every week.

I wasn't interested in writing music that wasn't beautiful for me to listen to.

And yes, there's a simplicity to writing books because you're not a member of a team, so you make all the decisions yourself instead of deferring to a committee.