I think history is collective memories. In writing, I’m using my own memory, and I’m using my collective memory.

Significant anniversaries are solemnly commemorated – Japan’s attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, for example.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.

In all seriousness, people think that it’s the ideas that are important. Well, everyone has ideas, all the time. I tend to write mine down and remember them, but at some point you have to apply the bum to the seat and knock out about sixty five thousand words – that’s how long a novel is.

I can remember being home from school with tonsillitis and writing stories in bed to pass the time.

The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles.

Although I write screenplays, I don’t think I’m a very good writer.

And the idea of just wandering off to a cafe with a notebook and writing and seeing where that takes me for awhile is just bliss.

You’re not going to make Hemingway better by adding animations.

Every time there has been an effort by the Haitian people to overcome the misery and poverty that comes from 200 years of bitter attacks, really bitter, the U.S. steps in and blocks it.

One of the good things about the way the Gulf War ended in 1991 is, you’d see the Vietnam veterans marching with the Gulf War veterans.

My priority is my books, at least at this point. What I have to do is write the narrative of this time.

And as a writer, one of the things that I’ve always been interested in doing is actually invading your comfort space. Because that’s what we’re supposed to do. Get under your skin, and make you react.

I have my favorite cat, who is my paperweight, on my desk while I am writing.

No book includes the entire world. It’s limited. And so it doesn’t seem like an aesthetic compromise to have to do that. There’s so much other material to write about.

Most people are unable to write because they are unable to think, and they are unable to think because they congenitally lack the equipment to do so, just as they congenitally lack the equipment to fly over the moon.

It may be that the most striking thing about members of my literary generation in retrospect will be that we were allowed to say absolutely anything without fear of punishment.

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

There is good and mediocre writing within every genre.

Generally, a writer of force is anywhere from 20 years to 200 years ahead of his generation.

Naturally, my stories are about women – I’m a woman. I don’t know what the term is for men who write mostly about men. I’m not always sure what is meant by ‚feminist.‘ In the beginning, I used to say, ‚Well, of course I’m a feminist.‘ But if it means that I follow a kind of feminist theory, or know anything about it, then I’m not.

One great use of words is to hide our thoughts.

Give a critic an inch, he’ll write a play.

I know that one of the great arts that the writer develops is the art of saying, ‚No. No, I’m finished. Bye.‘ And leaving it alone. I will not write it into the ground. I will not write the life out of it. I won’t do that.

There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know.

The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered, but a general effect of pleasing impression.

Writing is like a ‚lust,‘ or like ‚scratching when you itch.‘ Writing comes as a result of a very strong impulse, and when it does come, I, for one, must get it out.

There has been a huge attack against private sector unions. Actually, that’s been going on since the Second World War.

Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.

Sweet is the memory of past troubles.

In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility – I welcome it.

Doing graphic novels is cool! It’s fun! You get to write something, and then see it visually page by page, panel by panel, working with the artist, you get to see it fleshed out.

Repeal the Missouri Compromise – repeal all compromises – repeal the Declaration of Independence – repeal all past history, you still cannot repeal human nature. It will be the abundance of man’s heart that slavery extension is wrong; and out of the abundance of his heart, his mouth will continue to speak.

I think it all comes back to being very selfish as an artist. I mean, I really do just write and record what interests me and I do approach the stage shows in much the same way.

To our critical eyes, the threads of which the past is woven are, by nature, endless and indivisible. Scientifically speaking, we cannot grasp the absolute beginning of anything: everything extends backwards to be prolonged by something else.

America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense human rights invented America.

I really wish I knew what I was doing because I’d be writing hit songs every minute.

Europe became rich because it exploited Africa; and the Africans know that.

‚The Lion‘ all began with a picture of a faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood. This picture had been in my mind since I was about sixteen. Then one day, when I was about forty, I said to myself, ‚Let’s try to make a story about it.‘

We are asking the nations of Europe between whom rivers of blood have flowed to forget the feuds of a thousand years.

The colored folks been singing it and playing it just like I’m doin‘ now, man, for more years than I know. I got it from them.

Colonies do not cease to be colonies because they are independent.

I think I belong to America’s last generation of novelists. Novelists will come one by one from now on, not in seeming families, and will perhaps write only one or two novels, and let it go at that.

Man is the only animal capable of reasoning, though many others possess the faculty of memory and instruction in common with him.

All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.

The writer must earn money in order to be able to live and to write, but he must by no means live and write for the purpose of making money.

No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.

Writing has always had that tactile quality for me. It’s a physical experience.

Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them.

In known history, nobody has had such capacity for altering the universe than the people of the United States of America. And nobody has gone about it in such an aggressive way.

I was born in London in England in 1934. I went through, as a child, the horrors of World War II, through a time when food was rationed and we learned to be very careful, and we never had more to eat than what we needed to eat. There was no waste. Everything was used.

I feel like I was writing as I was learning to talk. Writing was always a go-to form of communication. And I knew I could sing from being in tune with the radio.

The entering class I joined in 1956 included just nine women, up from five in the then second-year class, and only one African American. All professors, in those now-ancient days, were of the same race and sex.

I hoped to be able to write a novel which would enable me to live on it while I wrote the next.

I long for the time when all human history is taught as one history, because it really is.

Long before history began we men have got together apart from the women and done things. We had time.

Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things.

To all those who have suffered as a consequence of our troubled past I extend my sincere thoughts and deep sympathy. With the benefit of historical hindsight we can all see things which we would wish had been done differently or not at all.

The 21st century is going to be the American century. Because we lead not only by the example of our power, but by the power of our example. That is the history of the journey of America.

I’m afraid the SS’s relationship with the Catholic Church is something the Church still has to deal with and does not deny.

I’ve tried to reduce profanity but I reduced so much profanity when writing the book that I’m afraid not much could come out. Perhaps we will have to consider it simply as a profane book and hope that the next book will be less profane or perhaps more sacred.