I may turn out an intellectual, but I'll never write anything but mediocre poetry.

I’m never going to be as adept lyrically as Jay Z or Morrissey.

I could never stand to be a writer. Not a real writer. It's entirely too awful, having thoughts that refuse to become sentences.

I don't like to write like God. It is only because you never do it, though, that the critics think you can't do it.

And since, I never dare to write
As funny as I can.

"And it's what you never will write," said the Controller. "Because, if it were really like Othello nobody could understand it, however new it might be. And if were new, it couldn't possibly be like Othello."

[I'm]a freak user of words, not a poet.

I want to write — I want to write — I want to write and never never never will. I know it and I am so unhappy and it seems as though nothing else mattered. Whatever I'm doing, it's always there, an ultimate longing there saying, "Write this — write that — write —" and I can't. Lack ability, time, strength, and duration of vision. I wish someone would tell me brutally, "You can never write anything. Take up home gardening!"

... I try really hard not to write dumb things. I cannot speak for Mr. Brooks.

And I'm not a poet: but never despair!
I'll madly live the poems I shall never write.

No matter how many times people try to pick my lyrics apart … nobody will really understand what these songs truly mean to me because I would rather not get into it.

I did not author these songs because I am a member of parliament; I would do what I did if I was in a different position,”

I can't see me writing an autobiography. I mean it seems so stupid. [Laughter.] You have to feel like you are telling the world something. I feel I'm doing it when I write the way I write. (1995)

Once I had recognized that it was not my vocation to write a happy ending, I did my damnedest to avoid one entirely. I once referred to this process as “Messing up my life, so I could write stupid little songs about it,” and I can’t improve on that description here, but then songs are never exactly taken from life.