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.

Jane Austen is the pinnacle to which all other authors aspire.

The best measure of a man’s honesty isn’t his income tax return. It’s the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.

When I was very young I was sort of floored by the fact that my mother and my father and everyone I knew was going to die one day, and myself too. I had a sort of a philosophical crisis. I couldn’t believe that we were mortal.

I think and that is all that I am.

I get naturally uncomfortable when I’m put under a magnifying glass.

I don’t like to read things that people write about me. I’d rather read what kids have to say about me because it’s not their profession to do that.

I’m my own worst critic, and if I don’t pull off what I think I wanted to do in my head, then I won’t be a happy girl.

Ah! yes, I know: those who see me rarely trust my word: I must look too intelligent to keep it.

I do suffer from depression, I suppose. Which isn’t that unusual. You know, a lot of people do.

You have to like the present; if not your life becomes secondhand, if you think it was better before. Or that it will be better in the future.

Overall there’s going to be things I’m not great at.

We are taught you must blame your father, your sisters, your brothers, the school, the teachers – but never blame yourself. It’s never your fault. But it’s always your fault, because if you wanted to change you’re the one who has got to change.

I don’t really read a lot of newspapers. I don’t pay attention to what is being said or written about me. I’ve had lots of experiences in the past when I got too much into it. That sort of diverts your focus.

I am not some goddess that dropped down from the sky to sing pop music; I am not some extra-incredible human person that needs to be told how wonderful they are all day and kissed.

You know, my family and friends have never been yes-men: ‚Yes, you’re doing the right thing, you’re always right.‘ No, they tell me when I’m wrong, and that’s why I’ve been able to stay who I am and stay humble.

Money is an unavoidable consequence, but it isn’t the reason I write; if it was, I wouldn’t have written any of the YA books, because advances in that field are small compared to what I’d got now for an ‚adult‘ DW.

Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.

My body is quite tiny, but a lot of the emotions I feel are pretty explosive. They have to come out.

I’m selfish.

I guess I’m living in the present more than the past.

Anyone who has declared someone else to be an idiot, a bad apple, is annoyed when it turns out in the end that he isn’t.

As a lifestyle you always being the focal point is innately unhealthy.

We human beings are strange creatures and still reserve the right to think for ourselves.

When you’re in hell, you forget how great you really are because you’re suffering and you forget the great things you’ve done.

How lucky Adam was. He knew when he said a good thing, nobody had said it before.

Some days I totally appreciate everything that’s happening to me, and some days I feel everyone’s waiting for me to mess up.

People intoxicate themselves with work so they won’t see how they really are.

The man never feels the want of what it never occurs to him to ask for.

Be smarter than other people, just don’t tell them so.

Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.

I’m not a marketing person. I don’t ask myself questions. I go by instinct.

Early on, I was so impressed with Charles Dickens. I grew up in the South, in a little village in Arkansas, and the whites in my town were really mean, and rude. Dickens, I could tell, wouldn’t be a man who would curse me out and talk to me rudely.

I’m not a natural born performer.

Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is.

Growing up in the place I did I never was aware of any other option but to question everything.

I’m happy being myself, which I’ve never been before. I always hid in other people, or tried to find myself through the characters, or live out their lives, but I didn’t have those things in mine.

One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.

In prayer, we stand where angels bow with veiled faces. There, even there, the cherubim and seraphim adore before that selfsame throne to which our prayers ascend. And shall we come there with stunted requests and narrow, contracted faith?

Pride deafens us to the advice or warnings of those around us.

I’ve never seen myself as a star. I never call myself a celebrity or a superstar, whatever.

The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it: so fine that we are often on the line and do not know it.

I have a hard time figuring out what kind of box to put me in, too, because I don’t know exactly what’s going on around me or why. But I need to stay outside of boxes because then I can look at what’s inside of them without being part of them.

In general, pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes.

If man makes himself a worm he must not complain when he is trodden on.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile.

Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey ‚people.‘ People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war… Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest.

Everything is an open book. I don’t speak on other people’s hardship, but if it happened in my life or something that has been an experience on my particular journey, I’m going to talk about it. That’s what my fan base appreciates the most. I’m universal. You can relate to the things I say or that I go through.

I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.

When we see a natural style, we are astonished and charmed; for we expected to see an author, and we find a person.

Your love is not outside; it is deep within you. You can never lose it, and it cannot leave you. It is not dependent on some other body, some external form.

I’ve never been reckless – it’s always calculated. I’m mischievous, but I’m calculated.

All my big mistakes are when I try to second-guess or please an audience. My work is always stronger when I get very selfish about it.

I do all the evil I can before I learn to shun it? Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

To meditate means to go home to yourself. Then you know how to take care of the things that are happening inside you, and you know how to take care of the things that happen around you.

I cannot always control what goes on outside. But I can always control what goes on inside.

Our passions are like convulsion fits, which, though they make us stronger for a time, leave us the weaker ever after.

Because of its phantom nature, and despite elaborate defense mechanisms, the ego is very vulnerable and insecure, and it sees itself as constantly under threat. This, by the way, is the case even if the ego is outwardly very confident.

At some point, you grow out of being attracted to that flame that burns you over and over and over again.