I just can't seem to write songs about peace and love. Yeah right how do you get that?

To be misunderstood can be the writer's punishment for having disturbed the reader's peace. The greater the disturbance the greater the possibility of misunderstanding.

As a young boy I read 'Cheaper by the Dozen' and immediately became neurotic about my use of time. It taxed me severely but only for the next 50 years. But I think it also allowed me to discipline myself to sit in the chair and be a writer where one of the most needed qualities is patience.

I have a huge respect for writers and realise that this is not an area that I find easy. I doubt that I would have the patience in front of a blank sheet of paper to become a writer.

As for goals I don't set myself those anymore. I'm not one of these 'I must have achieved this and that by next year' kind of writers. I take things as they come and find that patience and persistence tend to win out in the end.

Do you want to be an artist and a writer or a wife and a lover? With kids your focus changes. I don't want to go to PTA meetings.

I never sort of thought of myself as a comedy writer by nature.

What a book a devil's chaplain might write on the clumsy wasteful blundering low and horribly cruel work of nature!

I've only been to Ireland once and I felt I would wake up with voices in my head almost like music and that if I were a songwriter I would be very inspired.

I write music with an exclamation point!