We are used to female writers who use their private lives as unmitigated material being somewhat hormonal this somehow 'excuses' what might be seen as a highly unfeminine ability to turn their personal upsets into money.

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

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.

I've seen a lot of the United States having stayed in so many different cities and towns for work. It's such a strange and fascinating country and instead of learning about it through a textbook I would rather discover its history and traditions and institutions through fiction and nonfiction writers.

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.

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.