There are some advantages to being a writer: you do generally get better as you get older. I think I understand things better. When I was a kid, I was kind of guessing at the emotion. Now I'm interested in writing more difficult books, books that confront the facts of life, of death and dying and failure - the majority of life. You write outwardly imaginative books when you're younger. When you're older you apply imagination to internal experience.
I like to be as diverse as possible. I think the humorous side and the serious side are both elements of my personality. It's what makes me who I am and if I was to neglect either one of those sides and just focus on one of them, it wouldn't be the full spectrum of my personality.
In my standup work, I always do these characters, older people who are just off to the side. It's easier to write a story about the guy who made it to the top, but the middle is so much more interesting, so much more murky.
I think as you get older, there are things that there's just no light side to, but you know, I guess the more you empathise with people, the more empathy you have, the less you are able to see the lighter side.
People talk about books that write themselves, and it's a lie. Books don't write themselves. It takes thought and research and backache and notes and more time and more work than you'd believe.
As you get older, the defeats become more painful. They definitely hurt more.
The older I get and the more fiction I write, the more I outline, the more I think about plot before I dive in and plunge too far.
As I get older and older, people like my work more and more.
All the issues you deal with get more complicated as you get older; it takes more focus to write songs that reflect what you've gone through.
I'm not a robot; I have a personality and I have emotions. I have a humorous side to me and an angry side to me.
I hear stories of kids trying to swipe left or right on books - we have to rein that back a bit and not become drones ourselves. The more we embrace it, the more machine-like we risk becoming.
If I do foray more into writing comic books, I definitely would hope that my acceptance is based more on my ability to write than my ability to schmooze my way in as a celebrity.
It's always interesting researching characters and as I get older and the more that I work in this business, I do more and more of it because I realize how important it is.
The work gets more difficult as you get older. You learn more and you gather more experiences, there is deeper pain and higher highs.
You can't write a book if you've never read a book. And if you've read five books and you try to write a book, your book will mainly encompass the themes and the context of the five books you've read. Now, the more books you read, the more you can bring to a book when you decide to write one. So the more rap I learned, the more I was able to bring to rap when I decided to rap. But this was all subconscious.
I just think that things get easier as you get older and wiser and more experienced. You get more confident about who you are as you get older. I find that really comforting.