And of course there's so much music in and around our family. I had a piano during Christmas because it's obviously useful through the season. There are so many people songwriters who are around.

I learned that the only way you are going to get anywhere in life is to work hard at it. Whether you're a musician a writer an athlete or a businessman there is no getting around it. If you do you'll win - if you don't you won't.

Every reader finds himself. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what without this book he would perhaps never have seen in himself.

But I work harder now because I have so much more exposure. And actually the harder you work as a writer the better you get at it. It's like anything else. It's a muscle you have to exercise. I write more now than ever.

I'm so disturbed when my women students behave as though they can only read women or black students behave as though they can only read blacks or white students behave as though they can only identify with a white writer.

Then I read Little Women and of course like a lot of really young girls I was very taken with Jo - Jo being the writer and the misfit.

Men like women who write. Even though they don't say so. A writer is a foreign country.

I am a writer who happens to love women. I am not a lesbian who happens to write.

Comedy can be especially in a writer's room really aggressive kind of a very male-dominated room and it would be hard for women. It's not a nurturing place. It's not like a lot of women are going to say I can't wait to live that lifestyle and be in a writer's room until 2 or 3 a.m.

I've been trying to find women writers for my staff for a while now and I have three women on my staff and three guys so it's pretty equal. I don't know why that is. It's been the same thing for a while. It's hard for female comedians to stand out. That's weird. That's a shame.

One reason the human race has such a low opinion of itself is that it gets so much of its wisdom from writers.

Writing is no dying art form in America because most published writers here accept the wisdom and the necessity of encouraging the talent that follows in their footsteps.

But I do think it's important to remember that writers do not have a monopoly of wisdom on their books. They can be wrong about their own books they can often learn about their own books.

I probably wouldn't be a songwriter if I didn't grow up the way I did. It was difficult and it was at times very scary to grow up in a household so unsettled and at times very violent. But it also I guess it earned me a sort of wisdom at a young age that's served me well.

No one ever found wisdom without also being a fool. Writers alas have to be fools in public while the rest of the human race can cover its tracks.

On the publicity tour of 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding ' I was asked over and over again if as the writer I felt it was a fair depiction of real life to have someone of my er below average looks hook up with hottie John Corbett.

The reason that war is such a fascinating subject for writers is because it's a revealer. Put a bunch of people in an adrenaline-fuelled life-or-death situation and their fundamental behaviours are exposed the scrim is taken away and the motivations behind each personality come out to play.

I'm a writer. I don't support any war. That's my principle.

And I'm a slow writer: five six hundred words is a good day. That's the reason it took me 20 years to write those million and a half words of the Civil War.

My assignment is what every writer's assignment is: tell the truth of his own time.

I don't know much about creative writing programs. But they're not telling the truth if they don't teach one that writing is hard work and two that you have to give up a great deal of life your personal life to be a writer.

To be a writer does not mean to preach a truth it means to discover a truth.

A writer should have this little voice inside of you saying Tell the truth. Reveal a few secrets here.

A writer's job is to tell the truth.