I think my family and closest friends are learning about my need to withdraw and I am learning how to restore and store my energy to both serve the community to the best of my ability and to serve my writer's heart.

I do remember actually learning chords to Beatles songs. I thought they were great songwriters.

I am involved with 'Write Girl ' which is such a great organization because they go into inner city schools and work with underprivileged girls to pair them up with other writers. And it gets them learning to express themselves and become familiar with their own voice. They have a 100% success ratio getting those girls into college.

If you're a singer you lose your voice. A baseball player loses his arm. A writer gets more knowledge and if he's good the older he gets the better he writes.

If I have enough ego to say I'm a writer a director a producer and an actor I should have the energy and the knowledge to write a scene for this great actor named Henry Fonda and direct him in it and have it work.

I think my knowledge of music theory is rooted in jazz theory and a lot of the writers of standards - Rodgers and Hart and Gershwin.

The thing with film and theater is that you always know the story so you can play certain cues in each scene with the knowledge that you know where the story's going to end and how it's going to go. But on television nobody knows what's going to happen even the writers.

If you desire information on some point of law you are not likely to ponder over the ponderous tomes of legal writers in order to obtain the knowledge you seek by your own unaided efforts.

As writers become more numerous it is natural for readers to become more indolent whence must necessarily arise a desire of attaining knowledge with the greatest possible ease.

Faulkner is a writer who has had much to do with my soul but Hemingway is the one who had the most to do with my craft - not simply for his books but for his astounding knowledge of the aspect of craftsmanship in the science of writing.