Well, what's interesting, I try not to think about the radio when I'm writing a song. I want people to love the song, and that means it might not be exactly thinking about the radio, but it's thinking about your audience and saying, 'I want people to like this song after it's done.'
You see, the difference is the Republicans' hatred of Obama is based on a paranoid feeling about what he might do, what he's thinking, what he secretly wants to change. Anger with Bush was based on what he actually did. What Bush was thinking didn't matter. Because he wasn't.
Writing fiction is very different to writing non-fiction. I love writing novels, but on history books, like my biographies of Stalin or Catherine the Great or Jerusalem, I spend endless hours doing vast amounts of research. But it ends up being based on the same principle as all writing about people: and that is curiosity!
With lyrics for me, it's usually musically-based. It's not really poetry- or writer-based. It's rock-based. It doesn't mean that I'm aping rock lyrics, but I'm writing from a music standpoint. I'm thinking more of music heroes, if they're in my mind. Not William Blake or John Ashbury. Sometimes maybe I thought of him a little bit. Or Wallace Stevens. I don't even really fully understand either of them.
Writing is the act of saying "I," of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying "listen to me, see it my way, change your mind."
Avoid prologues: they can be annoying, especially a prologue following an introduction that comes after a foreword.
Actually, that's one of the things I was thinking about writing a story about me, loosely based or autobiographical. I just don't want to be like some people that are in their twenties and writing autobiographies.
I didn't realize it at the time, but writing obituaries was one of best jobs that I've ever had. After all, it's the only time that someone will ever laminate my work and put it in their Bible. Plus, let's be honest, writing obits in Sarasota is a very busy job. The old saying was that old people lived in Miami, but their parents lived in Sarasota.
I don't care for the applause one gets by saying what others are thinking; I want actually to change people's thoughts. Power over people's minds is the main personal desire of my life; and this sort of power is not acquired by saying popular things.
I'm optimistic. I see no longer people accepting fuzzy thinking in the world. The change is not that people aren't still saying under-informed things. The change is that if you're in power and you say something under-informed, there are people out there with a voice who will take you to task for having done so
What attracted us and allured us to Old Trafford are all the great things, all the great history, and all the great heritage. People keep saying 'what are you going to change?' And the thing I keep saying is people aren't going to notice a change.
Outside of interviews, I spend very little time thinking about myself. I spend time thinking about my writing and my children and other things that are pertinent.
People are spending way too much time thinking about climate change, way too little thinking about AI.
In many ways, writing is the act of saying 'I,' of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying, 'Listen to me, see it my way, change your mind.' It's an aggressive, even a hostile act.
Which of us is not saying to himself which of us has not been saying to himself all his life: " I shall alter that when I have a little more time"? We never shall have any more time. We have, and we have always had, all the time there is.
Another thing is, people lose perspective. It is a cultural trait in America to think in terms of very short time periods. My advice is: learn history. Take responsibility for history. Recognise that sometimes things take a long time to change. If you look at your history in this country, you find that for most rights, people had to struggle. People in this era forget that and quite often think they are entitled, and are weary of struggling over any period of time