There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read.

When I prepare, I am not messing around. I find the right places, the right people, and the right environment. Iceland is one of those places.

Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.

I think it’s healthy for a person to be nervous. It means you care – that you work hard and want to give a great performance. You just have to channel that nervous energy into the show.

I thought I couldn’t make a difference because I was too small.

If you’re walking down the right path and you’re willing to keep walking, eventually you’ll make progress.

To not follow your passion in life is a recipe for failure and unhappiness.

If you deserve it, go get it.

I do not think that there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature.

Faith activates God – Fear activates the Enemy.

I don’t think about the end game. I’ve got lots to occupy my mind. It’s the rage that keeps me going.

If you can’t read, it’s going to be hard to realize dreams.

If you are first you are first. If you are second you are nothing.

Never lose a holy curiosity.

Have you not learned that strength comes to an ordinary soul when given an extraordinary calling?

Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one’s thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world.

Admiration for a quality or an art can be so strong that it deters us from striving to possess it.

A great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up.

Whatever good things we build end up building us.

Success is counted sweetest by those who never succeed.

I started out in life as a poet; I was only writing poetry all through my 20s. It wasn’t until I was about 30 that I got serious about writing prose. While I was writing poems, I would often divert myself by reading detective novels; I liked them.

It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.

I can’t ever remember sitting around and saying, ‚gosh let’s hurry up and get these debates going, that’ll win it for me.‘ Nope.

You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.

Everyone needs a coach. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a basketball player, a tennis player, a gymnast or a bridge player.

Loving others always costs us something and requires effort. And you have to decide to do it on purpose. You can’t wait for a feeling to motivate you.

You just do what you can and you have as much fun as possible.

You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

It’s not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. It’s because we dare not venture that they are difficult.

Man’s only true happiness is to live in hope of something to be won by him. Reverence something to be worshipped by him, and love something to be cherished by him, forever.

I hate to see complacency prevail in our lives when it’s so directly contrary to the teaching of Christ.

If you take no risks, you will suffer no defeats. But if you take no risks, you win no victories.

I can’t tell you the number of times I looked down at what was going on on the ground, or I was engaged in a fight somewhere, and I knew within a couple of minutes how I was going to screw up the enemy. And I knew it because I’d done so much reading.

Books are to be distinguished by the grandeur of their topics even more than by the manner in which they are treated.

Over the years I’ve learned how to lock myself up in a prison of hope, knowing that God has nothing but His best planned for me. He promised me things concerning my ministry and my life.

Life’s a fight. It’s a good fight of faith.

Ideas excite me, and as soon as I get excited, the adrenaline gets going and the next thing I know I’m borrowing energy from the ideas themselves.

The highest reward for a person’s toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.

A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.

I am impelled, not to squeak like a grateful and apologetic mouse, but to roar like a lion out of pride in my profession.

Ability is nothing without opportunity.

It’s not possible to advise a young writer because every young writer is so different. You might say, ‚Read,‘ but a writer can read too much and be paralyzed. Or, ‚Don’t read, don’t think, just write,‘ and the result could be a mountain of drivel.

Get busy living, or get busy dying.

Protect your enthusiasm from the negativity of others.

What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.

Some men see things as they are, and say why. I dream of things that never were, and say why not.

Good intentions never change anything. They only become a deeper and deeper rut.

The presence of passion within you is the greatest gift you can receive. Treat it as a miracle.

Do not look for approval except for the consciousness of doing your best.

My experience has been that work is almost the best way to pull oneself out of the depths.

Somebody once asked me what my theory of life was, and I said, ‚Don’t try.‘ That fits the writing, too. I don’t try; I just type.

I didn’t work hard to sit down and not work.

I am not afraid of saying something and going and pursuing it. That’s it. I see it in my mind. I say it out loud. I go and do it.

I’m not sure what you need first – the players believing or others believing in them – but in the end, both have to think it.

Without failure there is no achievement.

I kept writing not because I felt I was so good, but because I felt they were so bad, including Shakespeare, all those. The stilted formalism, like chewing cardboard.

Carry the battle to them. Don’t let them bring it to you. Put them on the defensive and don’t ever apologize for anything.

It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.

There’s no point in starting a business unless you’re going to make a dramatic difference to other people’s lives. So if you’ve got an idea that’s gonna make a big difference to other people’s lives, then just get on and do it.

I spend a lot of time reading.

Motivation is simple. You eliminate those who are not motivated.