We've got a bunch of new writers now who tell me they grew up watching The Simpsons. It's bizarre and they're writing some very funny stuff.

So that's why one of my rules of parody writing is that it's gotta be funny regardless of whether you know the source material. It has to work on its own merit.

No writing musicals is the hardest thing in the world. And it was really funny because I remember when the South Park movie came out there were some critics that said 'Well it's obvious that in order to get it to be 90 minutes they filled some time with music.'

I'm writing a book. I've got the page numbers done.

I think romance is friendship and attraction sort of meeting together and that does influence what I'm writing a lot. I try to establish the attraction obviously but I also think it's important to show the characters having actual conversations about things other than their feelings for each other - and to develop their friendship on the page.

People ask me if I ever thought of writing a children's book. I say 'If I had a serious brain injury I might well write a children's book' but otherwise the idea of being conscious of who you're directing the story to is anathema to me because in my view fiction is freedom and any restraints on that are intolerable.

You have an absolute freedom in Mexican writing today in which you don't necessarily have to deal with the Mexican identity. You know why? Because we have an identity... We know who we are. We know what it means to be a Mexican.

When people talk of the freedom of writing speaking or thinking I cannot choose but laugh. No such thing ever existed. No such thing now exists but I hope it will exist. But it must be hundreds of years after you and I shall write and speak no more.

What I used to do between writing fits was feed my kids ride my horse and go shopping for cat and dog food.

When I'm writing my neural pathways get blocked. I can't read. I can barely hold a conversation without forgetting words and names. I wish I could wear the same clothes and eat the same food each day.

The primary requisite for writing well about food is a good appetite. Without this it is impossible to accumulate within the allotted span enough experience of eating to have anything worth setting down.

If the first requisite for writing well about food is a good appetite the second is to put in your apprenticeship as a feeder when you have enough money to pay the check but not enough to produce indifference of the total.

Fairness forces you - even when you're writing a piece highly critical of say genetically modified food as I have done - to make sure you represent the other side as extensively and as accurately as you possibly can.

I've published one book before and now I'm writing a book of essays and stories about life in Tokyo. And I have one book coming out in May in Germany about fitness.

I've been writing a lot I've a few projects I'm trying to finance I do some acting I do some directing... Apart from that if I could get lower that a ten handicap on my golf game I'd be thrilled.

I was writing an earnest novel about cruises in the Caribbean and I just started writing 'Bridget Jones' to get some money to finance this earnest work and then I chucked it out.

I'm looking for backing for an unauthorized auto-biography that I am writing. Hopefully this will sell in such huge numbers that I will be able to sue myself for an extraordinary amount of money and finance the film version in which I will play everybody.

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.

The vehemence with which certain critics have chosen not simply to criticize what I've written but to challenge my writing this story at all speaks of what the book is about: fear of disapproval.

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

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.

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.

Oh yeah I was one of the first guys writing comic books I wrote Captain America with guys like Stan Lee who became famous later on with Marvel Comics.