The first set of lyrics for the first songs I ever wrote, which are the ones on 'Pretty Hate Machine,' came from private journal entries that I realized I was writing in lyric form.
I remember the first time I ever wrote down a song was when I was 6. I was at my friend Emma's house, and we wrote a song called 'Girls' Rules.'
The first songs I ever wrote - my first, like, serious offerings - were all written on ukulele. It's always been a part of the way I write for a really long time.
American music comes from the same tree, but sometimes we get to these places in history where we forget where things come from, and they get compartmentalized.
I never was a person that said, 'I'm gonna be a rapper.' I thought I would be a doctor. I just knew how to rap, and it was a cool thing to do, so I started doing it for fun.
So I really began as a failed poet - although when I first wanted to be a writer, I learned to write prose by reading poetry.
People don't realize that I started in musical theater. That's where my roots are.
When I am asked how I began writing poems, I talk about the indifference of nature.
The act of creation is a kind of ritual. The origins of art and human existence lie hidden in this mystery of creation. Human creativity reaffirms and mystifies the power of 'life.
The rude beginnings of every art acquire a greater celebrity than the art in perfection; he who first played the fiddle was looked upon as a demigod.
The independent films are really where I kind of come from and where I feel comfortable.
I hardly remember how I started to write poetry. It's hard to imagine what I thought poetry could do.
We are all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts, have their root in Greece.
To be a writer was always my greatest aim. I remember writing a play about Guy Fawkes when I was 10. I suppose it's significant, at least to me, that my first work should be about a historical figure.
I was raised playing music in coffeehouses and I feel that was the foundation for my career. I think it is important that we remember where we came from.
There is no civilization that did not begin with art, Whether it was drawing a line in the sand, painting a cave or dancing.
Returning to writing fiction after 13 years away from it. Returning to the rootstock of my whole life as a writer. It's what I had wanted to be for my entire life, since I can remember, since my particular time immemorial. It's how I got my start as a writer.
The art of dancing stands at the source of all the arts that express themselves first in the human person. The art of building, or architecture, is the beginning of all the arts that lie outside the person; and in the end they unite.
It's funny because when you do become successful, you're forced to look backwards and try to crawl back into the womb where you first started to create.
I started out as a poet. I've always been a poet since I was 7 or 8. And so I feel myself to be fundamentally a poet who got into writing novels.
I didn't start writing music until I was a sophomore in college. I would steal my roommate's guitar and sit on the front porch and kind of blend this weird spoken word and these little melodies over simple chords; that really started my whole journey as a musician.
When I was a young artist, and I would go look at other artists' career retrospectives, and I was often disappointed with the lack of story line... What was missing to me was the story of where the artist came from and how they got to where they were.
Lately I've been believing that music predates speech.
The roots of my music start from the ghetto.
I think fan fiction is the way most writers start, and the same goes for music and design.
