A fellow who’s a good artist, but isn’t good at telling a story in this form … in continuity form … can’t really work for us. Unless we get somebody to do the layouts for him and he just follows the layouts. We’ve done that in the past.
Writers - Writing Quotes
I’m really not so good with the living. But a refrigerated archive full of brittle missionary letters? I’m home.
Professionally, I dabbled in various topics and formats my first decade as a writer by necessity to pay the bills. Luckily, I fell in love with historical research and writing right around the time I realized I was a terrible reporter because I don’t like to pry.
I wanted to be a playwright, and wrote a play called “Martin Luther.” The trouble was that no one in my family talked. Eugene O’Neill’s family suffered, but they talked. That effort was hopeless from the start.
Literally none of the songs on the Calpurnia EP were drawn from personal experience at all. I feel like now I really draw from personal experience and try to write how I feel. I didn’t really know how to do that at that point. I think I was too young to figure it out.
Fortunately, I learned how to orchestrate. So when I write, I’m usually hearing what the song is and the orchestration. So something like “Walk on By”: as I’m writing that, I’m hearing the flugelhorn, which became identifiable.
I thought songs were so simple that I could do five of them a day, but songs that sound simple are deceptive. It’s a very complicated process.
Comedy’s all about comparisons and contrasts and congruities and incongruities and heightenings and understatement and exaggeration.
Self-expression is a hallmark of an artist, of art, to get something off one’s chest, to sing one’s song. So that element is present in all art. And comedy, although it is not one of the fine arts—it’s a vulgar art, it’s one of the people’s arts, it’s the spoken word, the writing that goes […]
It is the best feeling to randomly get an idea for a song and then have the ability to record it right away. I definitely love going into studios and collaborating with other people, but when it comes to recording vocals, I prefer doing it at home.
