I don't think I'm a great songwriter but I think I've learned a lot about it and I don't think there's any one way to do it. I don't think I can control it at all. I can just kind of hope that it happens.

It's possible that I've matured as a writer and I hope I've matured emotionally but I always find myself revisiting these adolescent scenes.

Someday I hope to write a book where the royalties will pay for the copies I give away.

I doubt I'll be singing forever because at some point people aren't going to want to hear my music and I hope that I'll still get the opportunity to write songs.

About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment.

I know the world is filled with troubles and many injustices. But reality is as beautiful as it is ugly. I think it is just as important to sing about beautiful mornings as it is to talk about slums. I just couldn't write anything without hope in it.

I do 280 episodes of TV a year write 15 recipes for the magazine and publish an annual book. With all of that we try to get one weekend a month with Isaboo at our home in the Adirondacks to relax and recharge.

I made a real specific decision when I came out of school and most artists were writing about home - if you were a woman you were writing about being a woman - and I decided not to do that write about what you know. That's not what I do. I went as far away from home as possible in terms of the development of my imagination.

If you're a misanthrope you stay at home. There are certain writers who really don't like other people. I'm not like that I don't think.

The hardest thing is spending twelve hours a day accommodating the rest of the world then going home at night and criticizing it. I would be curious about what I'd write if I didn't have to worry about offending.

I can write pretty much anywhere if you give me time and some quiet. The home is not usually the best place because I have four children. It's usually pandemonium around here!

So we come out to Los Angeles. And we met with every network. We met with show runners directors writers everything. And what we had an idea for they didn't like. And what they had an idea for we didn't like. So we went home.

Home base is the support system where we have a culinary team my own writers because of the shows and the books and stuff we have a culinary team of about six people. Marketing public relations accounting and all that sort of stuff.

I usually write away from home in coffee shops on trains on planes in friends' houses. I like places where there's stuff going on that you can lift your eyes see something interesting overhear a conversation.

I would go to work from 9 to 6 go home nap for two hours then write from 8 to 2 a.m.

After my tour I had time to stay at home be with my boyfriend and hang out with friends and that brought me down to earth and helped me write music from a more relaxed place.

Stand-up is like a movie every night. You write it direct it produce it the audience votes and you go home. There's nothing more satisfying.

It's not a bad thing for a writer not to feel at home. Writers - we're much more comfortable at parties standing in the corner watching everybody else having a good time than we are mingling.

I got a lovely check today from being a writer that I earned by sitting at home. That's rewarding.

Since I was there in the very beginning I know the history of the characters. So I make comments about the tone and sometimes remind the writers that we've done that before.

In a country like France so ancient their history is full of outstanding people so they carry a heavy weight on their back. Who could write in French after Proust or Flaubert?

Gay writers now have both a sense of history and the fables that allows them to dwell in the realms of the ridiculous and at the same time talk seriously about things.

It seems disingenuous to ask a writer why she or he is writing about a violent subject when the world and history are filled with violence.

Every writer has his writing technique - what he can and can't do to describe something like war or history. I'm not good at writing about those things but I try because I feel it is necessary to write that kind of thing.