I always wrote poetry and stuff like that so putting songs together wasn't that spectacular.

You know bad poetry I wrote in high school can still be found on the Internet and you know there's a Web log of our college newspaper. You know there's so many different stages of my creative development are sort of on-record if somebody were to choose to look for them.

I was a 16-year-old girl at one point so of course I wrote poetry.

But I liked Yeats! That wild Irishman. I really loved his love of language his flow. His chaotic ideas seemed to me just the right thing for a poet. Passion! He was always on the right side. He may be wrongheaded but his heart was always on the right side. He wrote beautiful poetry.

When I was in the Peace Corps I never made a phone call. I was in Central Africa I didn't make a phone call for two years. I was in Uganda for another four years and I didn't make a phone call. So for six years I didn't make a phone call but I wrote letters I wrote short stories I wrote books.

Peace Train is a song I wrote the message of which continues to breeze thunderously through the hearts of millions of human beings.

No 'F/X 2' was a job. I enjoyed doing it but that was definitely a job. I wrote that I didn't direct it but 'Candyman' and the earlier horror movies I made I was completely into horror and suspense and always have been. It's informed everything I've done even the way scenes are shot in 'Kinsey and 'Gods and Monsters.'

I had a couple of movies that I was passionately involved with that I could never get made. 'Richard Pryor ' I wrote for - gosh - over a year. That was close to getting made for two-and-a-half years after that. We're still pushing it you know. It is weird. Suddenly you wake up and it's like 'God five years have gone by.'

When I wrote the song I had the sea near Bombay in mind. We stayed at a hotel by the sea and the fishermen come up at five in the morning and they were all chanting. And we went on the beach and we got chased by a mad dog - big as a donkey.

As soon as I began it seemed impossible to write fast enough - I wrote faster than I would write a letter - two thousand to three thousand words in a morning and I cannot help it.

No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.

Every article I wrote in those days every speech I made is full of pleading for the recognition of lead poisoning as a real and serious medical problem.

I did know Ted Hughes and I partly wrote the book to explain to myself and others the complexities of a marriage that was for six years wonderfully productive of poetry and then ended in tragedy.

I don't think my wife likes me very much when I had a heart attack she wrote for an ambulance.

I was just learning to play guitar when Tracy Chapman came out. She wrote these songs she played them by herself and I so admired her for that.

For 'So Cold the River ' I'm actually working on adapting the book with Scott Silver who was just nominated for an Oscar for 'The Fighter ' and who also wrote '8 Mile ' which I think is a terrific screenplay. The chance to work with Scott is a tremendous pleasure and I'm learning a lot.

You made a lot of mistakes and you wrote a lot of crap. But it was all part of the learning process.