I’m a singer, a writer and an actress – when I find something that I feel good enough about doing.

I’m a singer, not a politician, and I think you don’t want the two to get confused. It’s not OK to be on CNN talking about people starving and then tell the interviewer that your new album is coming out in six months.

I knew from the age of 16 that I wanted to be a writer because I just didn’t think I could do anything else. So I read and read and wrote short stories and dreamed of escape.

I’ve been writing since I was really young, so I considered myself a writer for a really long time.

I’m a writer, and I will write what I want to write.

That little Miley Cyrus… she’s like a little Elvis. The kids love her because she’s Hannah Montana, but what people don’t realize about her is she is such a fantastic singer and songwriter. She writes songs like she’s 40 years old!

You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer.

But I think there are a set of experiences that turn a potential writer into a working writer, and then there are places in your life were you start to recognize what you want to do.

For a creative writer possession of the ‚truth‘ is less important than emotional sincerity.

A true critic ought to dwell upon excellencies rather than imperfections, to discover the concealed beauties of a writer, and communicate to the world such things as are worth their observation.

I’m a writer, not a professional runner. It’s fun and it helps me write. I need powerful concentration.

I don’t really like to call myself a brand, and I don’t like to think of myself as a brand. I’m a singer, a songwriter, a musician and a performer. And an actress, and all the other things that I do. When you add it all together, some might call it a brand, but that’s not my focus.

Before ever meeting Priyanka Chopra, I had heard her name coming out of Bollywood and was impressed: she was beautiful, talented, had made nearly 50 movies, earned multiple awards – a massive star.

I’m gonna be making records anyway, even if I had to sell ‚em out of the trunk of my car. I’m that kind of musician and singer.

I was not encouraged to follow the career of a writer because my parents thought that I was going to starve to death. They thought nobody can make a living from being a writer in Brazil. They were not wrong.

I had no ambition to be a writer because the books I read were too good, my standards were too high.

I’m a writer first and a singer second.

There are events which are so great that if a writer has participated in them his obligation is to write truly rather than assume the presumption of altering them with invention.

The writer may very well serve a movement of history as its mouthpiece, but he cannot of course create it.

The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.

Sometimes I wonder why I’m a novelist right now. There is no definite career reason why I became a writer. Something happened, and I became a writer. And now I’m a successful writer.

I began running on an everyday basis after I became a writer. As being a writer requires sitting at a desk for hours a day, without getting some exercise you’d quickly get out of shape and gain weight, I figured.

Doing a show for three weeks is nothing like doing a show for seven seasons.

Aside from singing, I’m also a dancer. I’ve been dancing since I was 8.

I’m a writer first and a singer second. And then I started editing my own videos when I was 17, so it’s a process I’ve been doing since I was younger.

I knew that I was ‚interesting‘ at 18 because I was aware that I could get away with doing things on stage.

I’m a writer. I don’t support any war. That’s my principle.

I’m always happy to blow up any misconceptions that people have about stage school cos everyone thinks it’s really nasty there but it’s not.

I don’t think of myself as an artist. I’m just a guy who can write.

When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes on a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlightenment and comfort at top speed.

I can only say the first thing that pops into my mind is I remember, years ago, seeing kind of a has-been country singer working – when I first moved to Nashville – in a bar in a Holiday Inn.

As a writer, as a creator, I’m giving you my experiences. But just take what I give you. You ain’t got to pry beyond that.

When I was five, I think, that’s when I started wanting to be an actress. I loved to play. I didn’t like the world around me because it was kind of grim, but I loved to play house. It was like you could make your own boundaries.

At times in my life the only place I have been happy is when I am on stage.

I’m a pretty decent writer. It comes easy to me. I don’t agonize over sentences. I write like I talk. I try to make them good books.

Every writer has his writing technique – what he can and can’t do to describe something like war or history. I’m not good at writing about those things, but I try because I feel it is necessary to write that kind of thing.

I’m happy to be a writer – of prose, poetry, every kind of writing. Every person in the world who isn’t a recluse, hermit or mute uses words. I know of no other art form that we always use.

I’m not a playwright.

I was brought up to try to see what was wrong and right it. Since I am a writer, writing is how I right it.

I hope to build a reputation as a science-fiction writer. That’s the pitch. We’ll see.

‚Lives‘ is one of those books I should really have written when I was younger. It is the classic childhood, adolescence, breakthrough-into-maturity book. Every beginning writer has that material – and after that, you’re not sure what you can do.

I’m first and foremost a writer. I followed my personal legend, my childhood dream of becoming a writer, but I can’t say why I’m one.

We like to think about how smart we are. But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in, it’s all there, at least the basic elements of it. You can’t change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.

I don’t go around thinking I’m Ray Bradbury all the time.

I’d love to do a musical. I’ve been known to have a good step or two. I’m half Samoan, you know, and part of our culture is singing and dancing daily.

Some critics will write ‚Maya Angelou is a natural writer‘ – which is right after being a natural heart surgeon.

I get nervous when I don’t get nervous. If I’m nervous I know I’m going to have a good show.

Doing stand-up is like running across a frozen pond with the ice breaking behind you. I love it because it’s dangerous.

Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent.

I became an actress because my mom wanted me to become an actress. It took me until my mid-30s to realize I actually didn’t. I actually wanted to write and direct and be more involved in politics and humanitarian issues.

I alone of English writers have consciously set myself to make music out of what I may call the sound of sense.

My favorite literary heroine is Jo March. It is hard to overstate what she meant to a small, plain girl called Jo, who had a hot temper and a burning ambition to be a writer.

That is how you get to be a writer, incidentally: you feel somehow marginal, somehow slightly off-balance all the time.

You know, as a writer, I’m more of a listener than a writer, cuz if I hear something I will write it down.

When I started making my own records, I had this idea of drowning out the singer and putting the rest in the foreground. It was the background that interested me.

I don’t think of myself as a metafictional writer at all. I think of myself as a classic writer, a realist writer, who tends to have flights of fancy at times, but nevertheless, my feet are mostly on the ground.

Faith Hill is a big role model.

Very rarely do I talk off the top of my head on stage. I’m not an improv guy. I’m a writer-guy who presents what he’s written.

In my work, as a writer, I only photograph, in words, what I see.

All the time, I’ve felt that life is a wager and that I probably was getting more out of leading a bohemian existence as a writer than I would have if I didn’t.

If I had a talent, it was for looking askew at everything, possibly more than my contemporaries. But I had to really push myself to be a writer.