Writing is a form of therapy sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write compose or paint can manage to escape the madness melancholia the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.

The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.

The big thing that everyone forgets you're famous and on TV and everything but I think there's something very rewarding to be able to write a song record it and have it turn out as you heard it in your head or even better.

When I was in fourth grade... this wonderful teacher said you didn't have to write a book report you could just talk about the book you could do a drawing of the book you could write a play inspired by the book and that's what I did. I got to be so famous. I had to go around to every school and perform it. It was just so natural and fun.

My office walls are covered with autographs of famous writers - it's what my children call my 'dead author wall.' I have signatures from Mark Twain Earnest Hemingway Jack London Harriett Beecher Stowe Pearl Buck Charles Dickens Rudyard Kipling Alfred Lord Tennyson to name a few.

I think there are a lot more writers who are actors than you know they just don't have roles on famous TV shows that you recognize.

I heard so many stories from Gaomi's peasants that I had an irrepressible urge to write them down. Today Gaomi's peasants know that they have become famous around the world through my writings but I think they are a little puzzled by this.

I don't want to be famous per se but I want to write books for as long as I can. And I plan on writing a lot.

Being famous as a writer is like being famous in a village. It's not really any very heady fame.

I really had little interest in becoming famous. When I write my book it will be my guide to avoid becoming a rock star.

I may not be the most famous songwriter in the world but you know a David Friedman song when you hear it. It took me a long time to appreciate that.

I was a shy kid but somehow I knew I would make it as a performer. I'd always be telling my mum that I was going to be a famous singer. In my school yearbooks I would write 'Remember me when I'm famous.' I knew I had a gift.

Our most famous writers are Faulkner and Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor. It would make sense that the poetry would reflect some of those same values some of the same techniques.

I'm not famous for my back story investigations I'm lucky that I work with good writers and it's usually in the script.

There's the famous thing that the A&R man from the record company is supposed to do: He's supposed to come into the studio and listen to the songs you've been recording and then say 'Guys I don't hear any singles.' And then everybody falls into a terrible depression because you have to write one.

I have a great job writing for 'The Office ' but really all television writers do is dream of one day writing movies. I'll put it this way: At the Oscars the most famous person in the room is like Angelina Jolie. At the Emmys the huge exciting celebrity is Bethenny Frankel. You get what I mean.

I imagined being a famous writer would be like being like Jane Austen.

Nashville is one of the greatest places for the best songwriters in the world. It's been fantastic to live there and to raise our family there. It's a great town.

What I want to do is tell stories about normal people in the American suburbs. I don't write the book where it's a conspiracy reaching the prime minister I don't write the book with the big serial killer who lops off heads. My setting is a very placid pool of suburbia family life. And within that I can make pretty big splashes.

All the songs I write are about human dynamics whether it's with girlfriends boyfriends or family.

It's not an accident that both my sister and I are writers. Our parents created an accidental Petri dish. My family has great storytellers and I grew up in a very funny conversational house and didn't have television. This small family farm was a bubble world that didn't have much to do with reality.

They needed someone to write a script of The Great Gatsby very quickly for the movie they were making. I took this job so I'd be sure to have some dough to support my family.

Never write an advertisement which you wouldn't want your family to read. You wouldn't tell lies to your own wife. Don't tell them to mine.

In every song I write whether it's a love song or a political song or a song about family the one thing that I find is feeling lost and trying to find your way.