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Though 'Fire and Rain' is very personal, for other people it resonates as a sort of commonly held experience... And that's what happens with me. I write things for personal reasons, and then in some cases it... can be a shared experience.

Mr. Olsen in the fifth grade made me want to be a writer. He said, 'Chuck, you do this really well. And this is much better than setting fires, so keep it up.' That made me a writer.

I know I am a writer; it is the only thing I am sure of.

Writing for me is definitely a form of ventilation - a way for me to cope and deal with emotions. I think it is for any writer.

The whole point of writing is to have something in your gut or in your soul or in your mind that's burning to be written.

Writing is sweat and drudgery most of the time. And you have to love it in order to endure the solitude and the discipline.

I am a writer because writing is the thing I do best.

When you're a writer, everything that interests you feeds into your work.

Writing is not a matter of choice. Writers have to write. It is somehow in their temperament, in the blood, in tradition.