Rodney Crowell Quotes

Rowling is a luminous storyteller. I love her sense of humor and the intricate wizarding world she built around Hogwarts. I think all writers aspire to be like her, to capture readers like she does. But I didn't think about 'Harry Potter' when I wrote 'The Bone Season.'

I always saw songwriting as the top of the heap. No matter what else you were going to do creatively - and there were a lot of choices - writing songs was king.

I started as a songwriter and wanted to be like Leonard Cohen. I've always seen my stories as enlarged songs.

When I started out, I was definitely writing about experiences that I hadn't had yet. The songs were just based on my influences, songwriters that had written songs before me and that were more experienced and 20, 30 years older than me.

I really appreciate Frank Ocean's lyrical style, I appreciate the way that he can kind of draw you into this personal space, but it's still lyrical. It's almost poetic, in a way, but it's very personal at the same time.

I think the thing that has made it possible for me to write personal songs and sing them year after year is the sensibility for good writing. Just opening your veins all over the paper is not necessarily going to be interesting. I wanted to speak to people.

Listen to the Bee Gees and you can learn to be a great writer.

I don't think there was a particular book that made me want to write. They all did. I always wanted to write.

I always wanted to be known as a songwriter and not just a songbird.

I've been religiously reading the O. Henry Prize anthologies every year since college, when I first began trying to write stories. Many of the authors whose work I cherish the most were people I first learned about through The O. Henry Prize Stories - and then I'd go search for their books.

My inspiration for writing is all the wonderful books that I read as a child and that I still read. I think that for those of us who write, when we find a wonderful book written by someone else, we don't really get jealous, we get inspired, and that's kind of the mark of what a good writer is.

I consider myself a songwriter before anything else. The fact that I have been able to write both of my records and establishing myself as a songwriter is super-important to me. Some people have that gift, where they can take on anything and make people believe it. I like to do a song from personal experience.

I was inspired to become a writer by horror movies and science fiction.

My heroes were never scientists. They were Graham Greene and Christopher Isherwood, you know, good writers.

I listened to a lot of Bob Dylan songs to see how he works. I've gotten into writing story-songs.

The book that first made me want to be a writer is Flannery O'Connor's short story collection 'A Good Man Is Hard To Find.'

I've always loved both writing and songwriting. The journey is fascinating to me.

I tend to write songs that are about something pretty specific. A lot of them tell some kind of little made-up story.

I'm inspired by nonmusical things a lot, whether it's a film or a book or whatever.

I really like the short stories that Melissa Bank writes. I think she's sort of channeling the female version of J.D. Salinger in more recent days.

I love watching movies, and I'm very inspired by movies when it comes to songwriting!

I admired Mary's work very much. From the time someone gave me 'The Liars' Club,' I immediately went into a world where I grew up. And I remember, when I finished the book, I actually thought, 'You know what, I need to write songs with her.'

I became a reader - never mind a writer - because of Stephen King.

Sloane Crosley and David Sedaris are two of my favorite writers; they're the kind of writers who make you feel like, 'I can do this. I want to do this.'

I learned to write by reading the kind of books I wished I'd written.