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I think people are confusing the right to write with the right to be published.

Journalists write because they have nothing to say, and have something to say because they write.

I live in America. I have the right to write whatever I want. And it's equaled by another right just as powerful: the right not to read it. Freedom of speech includes the freedom to offend people.

I like to reserve the right to write about whatever I like.

We have rights in America. In tandem with those rights, we have responsibility. Whatever type of journalist we are, whether it be in the entertainment business, or as professional journalists, we always have the consequences of the way we present fact and information.

As long as I am an American citizen, and as long as American blood runs in these veins, I shall hold myself at liberty to speak, to write, and to publish whatever I please on any subject, being amenable to the laws of my country for the same.

If you are a serious writer or just a normal one, in one way or another, you are writing in the service of freedom. All writers know, understand, or dream that their work will be in the service of freedom.

I think we have a great deal of mythology around writing. We believe that only a few people can really do it. I wrote a book called 'The Right to Write.' In it, I argued that all of us have the capacity to write. That it's as normal to write as it is to speak.

When you're on your own, you have all the self-censorship that everybody has when they try and write. All the little voices that say, 'No, you can't write that, what will they think of that?'

We have to protect all journalists, and journalists have to be allowed to do their jobs.