Everybody used to be busy writing songs - great songs - that became hits. Now everybody's writing hits. Everybody's desperately writing a hit because they know they can't survive if they don't have a hit. Where in the past, we were writing a song like 'More Than Words' on a porch, not really believing it was gonna be a hit.
I was writing a lot of true love songs-true love almost gone wrong but saved at the last moment...Many of the best songs get written in a state of abject misery. I prefer to write fewer songs and have less cataclysmic events in my life...Some hit songs are really stupid, and who knows why they're hits. But a lot of hit songs are really good.
One of the things I've learned from animation is that some guys are really good at writing, some guys are really good at design, some guys are really good at directing. It's almost like working in a band - not everybody plays every instrument.
There are a lot of things that are in the show that harken back to the old show, but I really wanted to resist doing a greatest hits. It was irresistible to do a greatest hits, but it was almost too easy. There are things that I know are still ahead of us, in the future of whatever Arrested Development brings.
I have many hits, big hits, that have been written by people I don't know. In almost all my shows, people say, 'Chente, here's a CD.' When I get home, I listen to them all, and what I like, I record.
My first break was in my home country with some pop songs that became hits, writing for French singers Christophe & Francoise Hardy, which became hits.
You find photographs in so many different ways - from chance encounters, from looking at your negatives, from the way the light hits your pillow in your home, from a sound or a movement that makes you look... It’s whatever draws you or makes you feel something. Then, the picture is only good if it has a life of its own. Every photo is almost a fiction or a dream. If it’s really good, it’s another form of life.
You just can't make bad writing look good. But if you have good writing, you just say it, and it's almost done.
I read a lot of scripts, and there's a lot of good writing and a lot of OK writing and a lot of crappy writing. And even with the really good writing, it doesn't necessarily speak to me.
Writing for the theatre is so different to writing for anything else. Because what you write is eventually going to be spoken. That's why I think so many really powerful novelists can't write a play - because they don't understand that it's spoken - that it hits the air. They don't get that.
I would rather not write if I'm depressed, or am going through a breakup, or I've had some disappointment, or I'm having a family issue. You don't want to just put out an open wound. Sometimes that just isn't even really good writing. Good writing should be good writing and storytelling and not just therapy or someone's personal journal.
Some hit songs are really stupid, and who knows why they're hits. But a lot of hit songs are really good. I agree with Jim [Lauderdale] in that I think the really good ones are songs that when you hear it [sic]...there's just something about it that touches your heart, and you don't know why.
Everybody can't come to New York and take the hits, take the hits of the city, take the hits of the media, take the hits of the fans. It's real.
Writing a good query letter has very little to do with writing a good novel. But if you can't write the one, it makes it really hard to get the other published.
You go to any Jay-Z concert, and he plays his hits. Comedians don't have hits. You have to have a whole brand-new hour. You have no hits to rely on. It's the hardest thing.