Pop songs are not as graceful as they used to be. Performers today haven't gone through the regimen of learning how to write. And of course everyone wants to own copyrights.

Everything starts and ends with the song and working with writers and really learning their process and craft was an invaluable experience.

An important aspect of the current situation is the strong social reaction against suggestions that the home language of African American children be used in the first steps of learning to read and write.

I want to direct produce and write learning as I go.

I spent many years trying to write a lot like Ben Folds or John Lennon or Rivers Cuomo. I think that's healthy when you're learning to write and seeing how chords fit together and how songs take shape.

I think my books talk about kids learning to like and respect themselves and each other. You can't write a message book you just tell the best story you know how to tell.

Early on it's good to develop the ability to write. Learning to write is a useful exercise even if what you're writing about is not that relevant.

Probably having fallen in love with music and movies at a young age and then first learning about writing by kind of following the path of writers like Dave Marsh and Lester Bangs and being a rock journalist.

The hardest thing was learning to write. I was 13 and the only writing I had done was for Social Studies. It consisted of copying passages right out of the encyclopedia.

Isn't one of your first exercises in learning how to communicate to write a description of how to tie your shoelaces? The point being that it's basically impossible to use text to show that.