When you’re writing a novel, you don’t want the reader to come out of it voting yes or no to some question. Life is more complicated than that. Reality simply consists of different points of view.

A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa.

It is a fact often observed, that men have written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write well under other circumstances.

As a country, we can’t teach kids how to read and write when we got 18 years to do it. And that’s – that’s a disgrace.

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

Never regret what you don’t write.

On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down .

The first story I finished was when I was six years old.

Our life is what our thoughts make it.

Surely a long life must be somewhat tedious, since we are forced to call in so many trifling things to help rid us of our time, which will never return.

I always wished for this, but it’s almost turning into more of a nightmare than a dream.

Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood.

The greatest magnifying glasses in the world are a man’s own eyes when they look upon his own person.

All of my writing is God-given.

Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.

I don’t think about who the audience is for my books.

I write screenplays in the middle of the night.

There’s a difference between describing and evoking something. You can describe something and be quite clinical about it. To evoke it, you call it up in the reader. That’s what writers do when they’re good.

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.

I try to look on all the great things God’s done, and not focus on the negative. It’s a perspective.

Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library, and it’s better than college. People should educate themselves – you can get a complete education for no money. At the end of 10 years, I had read every book in the library and I’d written a thousand stories.

If you would judge, understand.

I think people inspire me the most. If I meet a person who is incredibly complex, and all of a sudden, I start thinking in rhymes, that person could be a muse.

The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.

Mere humans who root through their refrigerators at three o’clock in the morning can only produce writing that matches what they do. And that includes me.

I was married a few times, and one of my husbands was jealous of me writing.

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

All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.

Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things.

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

The first real thought that I had of something that I might do was to write for car magazines, because I always had a car thing.

Old age, believe me, is a good and pleasant thing. It is true you are gently shouldered off the stage, but then you are given such a comfortable front stall as spectator.

Sometimes there are no good guys. There are no bad guys. It seems like everybody is in the middle.

A child thinks 20 shillings and 20 years can scarce ever be spent.

I was a grade B housewife, maybe a B minus. But when I got time to write, I would be unable to finish a sentence. I had anxiety attacks. Partly it was a way of personifying the situation because I couldn’t breathe. I was surrounded by people and by duties. I was a housewife and the children’s mother, and I was judged on how I performed those roles.

People in Latin America… love America from afar and emulate America in some ways but also hate a lot of things that America does to them.

Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.

Love is the answer to everything. It’s the only reason to do anything. If you don’t write stories you love, you’ll never make it. If you don’t write stories that other people love, you’ll never make it.

No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.

I wrote a few children’s books… not on purpose.

Ultimately, a real understanding of history means that we face nothing new under the sun.

The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty.

I have nothing to ask but that you would remove to the other side, that you may not, by intercepting the sunshine, take from me what you cannot give.

Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are awake, intentionally. So I get up early in the morning, 4 o’clock, and I sit at my desk and what I do is just dream. After three or four hours, that’s enough. In the afternoon, I run. The next day, the dream will continue.

What you see, but can’t see over is as good as infinite.

Wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it.

Everybody believes in something and everybody, by virtue of the fact that they believe in something, uses that something to support their own existence.

A novel is a work of poetry. In order to write it, one must have tranquility of spirit and of impression.

If I’d written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people – including me – would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.

Lena Waithe won an Emmy for writing while starring on the Netflix show ‚Master of None,‘ but it might be more accurate to call her a Master of Everything.

As far as I’m concerned, I’m a writer who’s writing books, and therefore, I don’t want to die. You’d miss the end of the book wouldn’t you? You can’t die with an unfinished book.

The ideas associated with the problems of the development of science, as far as I can see by looking around me, are not of the kind that everyone appreciates.

For the world to be interesting, you have to be manipulating it all the time.

I don’t think it’s possible to have a sense of tragedy without having a sense of humor.

My advice is this. For Christ’s sake, don’t write a book that is suitable for a kid of 12 years old, because the kids who read who are 12 years old are reading books for adults. I read all of the James Bond books when I was about 11, which was approximately the right time to read James Bond books.

I think that all things, in their way, reflect heavenly truth, the imagination not least.

Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.

Writing’s just as natural to me as getting up and cooking breakfast.

God reigns when we take a liberal view, when a liberal view is presented to us.

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