The things the writers have me doing on 'Suburgatory' are insane. I think they think it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.

I do not know that any writer has supposed that on this earth man will ultimately be able to live without food.

A lot of food criticism has a similar flavor to it and I'm probably going to write about it in a different way.

I'm not a food critic and I'm not really an authority to write anything on food.

As a freelance writer I'd be asked to become an expert for various magazines on any subject whether food or wine or history or the life span of veterinarians. I was completely unschooled in any of these things.

Part of my job as a food writer is to describe food. So my work on 'Top Chef ' I feel is an extension of that. When we give a criticism to the contestant we want to make sure we tell them why it's not working and why it would work if they did it a different way.

The magazine the daytime show we've always tried to write affordable accessible. Those are key words for us and I do mean us a huge staff of people at the magazine who love to cook affordable friendly food that helps families eat better for less.

It's all about who's where on the food chain. When I'm the story editor I expect my writers to follow my vision. When I'm working for another editor I'm obliged to follow their vision.

Fast food is hugely important in the life of a comedy writer. All we do is order in and what we're going to eat is hotly debated.

There is no way that writers can be tamed and rendered civilized or even cured. The only solution known to science is to provide the patient with an isolation room where he can endure the acute stages in private and where food can be poked in to him with a stick.

If you want to fight the evil you see in finance and industry get to work reading the corporate filings see if there has been fraud and where you find it report it to the SEC or write about it or blog about it.

I had a fear of becoming anything a fear of becoming a specialist. I might have become a doctor but if you become a doctor that's your specialty in life and you are defined by it. One of the attractions of being a writer is that you're never a specialist. Your field is entirely open your field is the entire human condition.

I fear dying in the middle of a book. It would be so annoying to write 80 000 words and not get to the end. I'm phobic about it. So when I'm writing a book I leave messages all over the house for people to know how the story ends and then someone can finish it for me.

Writers rush in where publishers fear to tread and where translators fear to tread.

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.

I could write an entertaining novel about rejection slips but I fear it would be overly long.

More than fantasy or even science fiction Ray Bradbury wrote horror and like so many great horror writers he was himself utterly without fear of anything. He wasn't afraid of looking uncool - he wasn't scared to openly love innocence or to be optimistic or to write sentimentally when he felt that way.

A writer of fiction lives in fear. Each new day demands new ideas and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not.

I always say three things make a writer: inspiration obviously perspiration doing the work. But the third is desperation. I'm not really fit for anything else or to have a real job. That fear drives me. The pressure has always been self inflicted.

Yet it ought to be obvious that good music generally occupies a higher plane that mere politics. Great writers can express moods through melody and capture experiences we share most powerfully - love lust longing joy rage fear triumph yearning and confusion.

I never discuss a novel while I'm writing it for fear that talking about it will diminish my desire to write it.

I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking what I'm looking at what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.

I write for those women who do not speak for those who do not have a voice because they were so terrified because we are taught to respect fear more than ourselves. We've been taught that silence would save us but it won't.

I was set free because my greatest fear had been realized and I still had a daughter who I adored and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.