Ideas come from the earth. They come from every human experience that you've either witnessed, or have heard about, translated into your brain, in your own sense of dialogue, in your own language form. Ideas are born, from what is smelled, heard, seen, experienced, felt, emotionalized. Ideas are probably in the air, like little tiny items of ozone. That's the easiest thing on earth is to come up with an idea. And the second thing is, the hardest thing on earth is to put it down.

I was traumatized into writing by war events. By going through a war in a combat situation and feeling the desperate sense of terrible need for some sort of th…

If you need drugs to be a good writer, you are not a good writer.

I don't believe in reincarnation. That's a cop-out... I anticipate death will be a totally unconscious void in which you float through eternity with no particu…

Song ideas have come to me in the middle of interviews, in the shower, or while I'm writing another song.

I started to write [The Name of the Rose] in March of 1978, moved by a seminal idea. I wanted to poison a monk.

It's interesting when a book comes to you. It comes to you in sort of flashes and you don't quite understand how they connect.