Writers speak stench.

He who speaks without modesty will find it difficult to make his words good.

On Sundays when I speak, I hopefully give somebody something that they can use the next day at work or at home.

Speak the truth, and all things alive or brute are vouchers, and the very roots of the grass underground there, do seem to stir and move to bear you witness.

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.

Before a man speaks it is always safe to assume that he is a fool. After he speaks, it is seldom necessary to assume it.

It’s funny because I’ve made a living off of words, but words get in the way of what you really want to say.

I know that some books and some writers, you can pretty much draw a square around it and say, ‚Nobody under 40,‘ or ‚Nobody under 25.‘ With my books, it always has been, and continues to be, spread right across the board, and I think the operative term is ‚reader.‘

In Japan, the writers have made up a literary community, a circle, a society. I think 90 percent of Japan’s writers live in Tokyo. Naturally, they make a community. There are groups and customs, and so they are tied up in a way.

All writers are going to have to learn more about science, because it’s such an interesting part of their environment.

Ten people who speak make more noise than ten thousand who are silent.

I’m evangelical on the subject of some chefs and writers.

Everything becomes a little different as soon as it is spoken out loud.

The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.

One thing that writers have in common is that they are readers first. They have read lots and lots of stuff, because they’re just infested with lots of stuff.

Today, writers want to impress other writers.

Our words will either bring life and victory or death and destruction. If we want to be happy, we have to be serious about speaking words of life that line up with God’s Word.

From my close observation of writers… they fall into two groups: 1) those who bleed copiously and visibly at any bad review, and 2) those who bleed copiously and secretly at any bad review.

It takes two to speak the truth: one to speak, and another to hear.

It cannot be said often enough that science fiction as a genre is incredibly educational – and I’m speaking the written science fiction, not ‚Star Trek.‘ Science fiction writers tend to fill their books if they’re clever with little bits of interesting stuff and real stuff.

Before I speak, I have something important to say.

A bad man is the sort who weeps every time he speaks of a good woman.

I like to speak on matters which matter to human beings, and almost everything matters to human beings.

When you are trying to impress people with words, the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in control. Even if you are saying something banal, it will seem original if you make it vague, open-ended, and sphinxlike.

Writers and books are cheap dates, especially when you compare the cost of a book with a ticket to the opera – or an NHL game.

Writers have to put up with this editor thing; it is ageless and eternal and wrong.

Sometimes one creates a dynamic impression by saying something, and sometimes one creates as significant an impression by remaining silent.

Sisters, do you realize the breadth and scope of your influence when you speak those things that come to your heart and mind as directed by the Spirit?

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

Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not.

You can stroke people with words.

A writer of fiction is really… a congenital liar who invents from his own knowledge or that of other men.

However many holy words you read, however many you speak, what good will they do you if you do not act on upon them?

I’m speaking for all of us. I’m the spokesman for a generation.

I seem to smell the stench of appeasement in the air.

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.

Well I have a microphone and you don’t so you will listen to every damn word I have to say!

If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.

People usually think according to their inclinations, speak according to their learning and ingrained opinions, but generally act according to custom.

Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.

When younger writers and poets, musicians and painters are weakened by a stemming of funds, they come to me saddened, not as full of dreams and excitement and ideas. I am then weakened and diminished, and made less rich.

We must distinguish between speaking to deceive and being silent to be reserved.

When he speaks to you he speaks with an earnest vibe and an earnest energy.

Speaking English is like tongue-twist for me. I can speak each word perfect, but then you have to string them together like, ‚Blah, blah, blah.‘ That’s when I get crazy.

Language is the dress of thought.

I don’t know if she should worry too much, I mean some of our greatest writers have had movies made of their books, lots of Hemingway novels were turned into movies, it doesn’t hurt the book.

Most poets are young simply because they have not been caught up. Show me an old poet, and I’ll show you, more often than not, either a madman or a master… it’s when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order simply to make a poem that you fail. That is why I do not rework poems.

Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.

He that speaks much, is much mistaken.

Writers write to influence their readers, their preachers, their auditors, but always, at bottom, to be more themselves.

Writers are lampposts and critics are dogs. Ask lampposts what they think about dogs. Does the dog hurt the lamppost?

People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order so they’ll have good voice boxes in case there’s ever anything really meaningful to say.

When I worked on a magazine, I learned that there are many, many writers writing that can’t write at all; and they keep on writing all the cliches and bromides and 1890 plots, and poems about Spring and poems about Love, and poems they think are modern because they are done in slang or staccato style, or written with all the ‚i’s‘ small.

Keep silence for the most part, and speak only when you must, and then briefly.

He who knows, does not speak. He who speaks, does not know.

Listen to many, speak to a few.

Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.