‚Royal Beatings‘ was my first story, and it was published in 1977. But I sent all my early stories to ‚The New Yorker‘ in the 1950s, and then I stopped sending for a long time and sent only to magazines in Canada. ‚The New Yorker‘ sent me nice notes, though – penciled, informal messages. They never signed them. They weren’t terribly encouraging.

The reason that I’m here at all is because of my relationship with my family and their encouragement of me to be a musician and to work hard. As long as I stay there in that space, I can do anything. That’s my truth.

If we’re going to bring out the best in people, we, too, need to sow seeds of encouragement.

I have zero desire, just so you know, to be in the limelight. I don’t think it’s good for the country to have a former president criticize his successor. You’re not going to see me giving my opinions in the public arena, until I start selling my book. I’m going to emerge then submerge.

I want to represent… to the kids to draw strength from me. So they can see that everybody goes through something, but you can rise up and do your best. Just try.

I didn’t want to be a writer, but I became one. And now I have many readers, in many countries. I think that’s a miracle. So I think I have to be humble regarding this ability. I’m proud of it and I enjoy it, and it is strange to say it this way, but I respect it.

And know that I am with you always; yes, to the end of time.

I’m not intelligent. I’m not arrogant. I’m just like the people who read my books. I used to have a jazz club, and I made the cocktails and I made the sandwiches. I didn’t want to become a writer – it just happened.

God is a great God! I want to encourage you to expect great things from Him.

Someone told me that each equation I included in the book would halve the sales.

I wouldn’t ever say if you’re having tough times then there must be something wrong with you or your attitude. Life’s a fight. It’s a good fight of faith. I encourage people to stay up, stay hopeful, stay faith-filled.

Because the Internet is so new, we still don’t really understand what it is. We mistake it for a type of publishing or broadcasting, because that’s what we’re used to. So people complain that there’s a lot of rubbish online, or that it’s dominated by Americans, or that you can’t necessarily trust what you read on the Web.

I write books back to back, and I work very hard on them.

Much publishing is done through politics, friends, and natural stupidity.

If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia.

I never expected any sort of success with ‚Mockingbird’… I sort of hoped someone would like it enough to give me encouragement.

Read with care, George Orwell’s diaries, from the years 1931 to 1949, can greatly enrich our understanding of how Orwell transmuted the raw material of everyday experience into some of his best-known novels and polemics.

A creation of importance can only be produced when its author isolates himself, it is a child of solitude.

If you feel that there’s the author and then the character, then the book is not working. People have a habit of identifying the author with the narrator, and you can’t, obviously, be all of the narrators in all of your books, or else you’d be a very strange person indeed.

I feel real good because it’s about representing the young world and how to uplift each other and how to push us to be greater and make sure we don’t fall or get trapped or get in trouble, you know what I mean. Stay focused, you know what I mean.

A family looks for ways to support and inspire one another.

A critic should be taught to criticise a work of art without making any reference to the personality of the author.

Many people tell me that they don ‚t know what to feel when they finish one of my books because the story was dark, or complicated, or strange. But while they were reading it, they were inside my world and they were happy. That’s good.

A word of encouragement from a teacher to a child can change a life. A word of encouragement from a spouse can save a marriage. A word of encouragement from a leader can inspire a person to reach her potential.

Be amusing: never tell unkind stories; above all, never tell long ones.

No one’s policing their own minds more than an author. You spend a lot of time in your own head analysing what you think about things, and a philosophy comes.

Before the Civil War, Canada was at the top of the underground railroad. If you made it into Canada, you were safe unless someone came and hauled you back. That was also true during the Vietnam War for draft resisters.

I’ve always been surrounded by many great people and professors, but my family, especially my mom who was a teacher, was the person who encouraged me to study and pushed me to continue. When we’re young, we don’t understand why our parents bug us so much with school and doing homework, but it’s a blessing to have that support at home.

Everyone has the potential to become an encourager. You don’t have to be rich. You don’t have to be a genius. You don’t have to have it all together. All you have to do is care about people and initiate.

Once you publish a book, it is out of your control. You cannot dictate how people read it.

I have written a book. This will come as quite a shock to some. They didn’t think I could read, much less write.

When a person is going through hell, and she encounters someone who went through hellish hell and survived, then she can say, ‚Mine is not so bad as all that. She came through, and so can I.‘

My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me.

I don’t even like showing my stuff to publishers and editors much.

Dickens, as you know, never got round to starting his home page.

An author writes a book, and that’s the book at that point. And if the author writes the book again, then somehow something has gone wrong, if you see what I mean.

It’s so tedious writing cookbooks or writing the recipes because I’ve never been much of a measurer. But to write a book, you have to measure everything.

Publishing is in a kind of Jurassic age.

We can improve our relationships with others by leaps and bounds if we become encouragers instead of critics.

We have a big appetite for putting people down but, at the heart of everyone, there’s enough room for all of us to succeed.

To those of you who received honours, awards and distinctions, I say well done. And to the C students, I say you, too, can be president of the United States.

It’s very inexpensive to give a compliment.

One of the most terrible feelings in the world is knowing that someone else doesn’t like you. Especially when you don’t know what you’ve done to deserve it.

An author who speaks about their own books is almost as bad as a mother who speaks about her own children.

Correction does much, but encouragement does more.

I’m writing a book. I’ve got the page numbers done.

I’m the only person you’ve ever met who has read Longfellow.

If you’re in a workplace you don’t like right now, be encouraged because God will use it for your good. Think about it this way: He wants you to be a light in the darkness – and He’s putting His confidence in you!

I like writing. I get cranky when I can’t. Yes, I write books back to back, and I work very hard on them.

Off with you! You’re a happy fellow, for you’ll give happiness and joy to many other people. There is nothing better or greater than that!

I always try to put a seed of hope into people’s hearts. I’m not there to teach them doctrine necessarily, but to let them know that God is a good God, and has a plan for their lives. Hopefully, that will restore their faith, or draw them into faith.

You must reward the kind of behavior that you want.

I never experiment with anything in my books. Experimentation means you don’t know what you’re doing.

For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible.

I exhort you also to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than every other earthly conflict.

You have people come into your life shockingly and surprisingly. You have losses that you never thought you’d experience. You have rejection and you have learn how to deal with that and how to get up the next day and go on with it.

Sometimes I feel my whole life has been one big rejection.

My own books drive themselves. I know roughly where a book is going to end, but essentially the story develops under my fingers. It’s just a matter of joining the dots.

When I was crossing the border into Canada, they asked if I had any firearms with me. I said, ‚Well, what do you need?‘

Let God’s promises shine on your problems.

In every author let us distinguish the man from his works.