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I find it an easy way into writing pieces is to think what the character's voice is like, and start from there.

Character and story are suggested by the voice in the words themselves.

I feel it's very important to let individual writers' voices come through. But the character has to be consistent.

Language in fiction is made up of equal parts meaning and music. The sentences should have rhythm and cadence, they should engage and delight the inner ear.

He steps on stage and draws the sword of rhetoric, and when he is through, someone is lying wounded and thousands of others are either angry or consoled.

The duty of rhetoric is to deal with such matters as we deliberate upon without arts or systems to guide us, in the hearing of persons who cannot take in at a glance a complicated argument or follow a long chain of reasoning.

With me it's the whole thing, it's the conceit, the idea, what the poem is saying. And it goes on just as long as is necessary to say what needs to be said.

I guess the two Manifesto, Communicating Vessels, Mad Love, and some of his poetry made a significant mark on me but as far as bringing a literary element into the music I see it as a much broader assimilation.

I think what matters most in literary work is the context, not the text.

For me, everything about the telling is guided by tone. It's a bit mysterious; it's either there, or it isn't.