Once you publish a book, it is out of your control. You cannot dictate how people read it.

You know, one of the things I think you understand as president is you’re held responsible for everything, but you don’t always have control of everything, right?

The awareness that health is dependent upon habits that we control makes us the first generation in history that to a large extent determines its own destiny.

One should never forbid what one lacks the power to prevent.

Someone told me that each equation I included in the book would halve the sales.

What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don’t like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don’t expect freedom to survive very long.

You know we’re going to control the insurance companies.

It’s OK to have your eggs in one basket as long as you control what happens to that basket.

I read all the time, and I’m often struck by something I’m reading.

‚Royal Beatings‘ was my first story, and it was published in 1977. But I sent all my early stories to ‚The New Yorker‘ in the 1950s, and then I stopped sending for a long time and sent only to magazines in Canada. ‚The New Yorker‘ sent me nice notes, though – penciled, informal messages. They never signed them. They weren’t terribly encouraging.

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me. I write a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to my magnificent estate.

Much publishing is done through politics, friends, and natural stupidity.

You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control your attitude toward what happens to you, and in that, you will be mastering change rather than allowing it to master you.

When the external factors over which one has no control in a way start to become negative, it starts to affect our creative juices.

Over the years, people I’ve met have often asked me what I’m working on, and I’ve usually replied that the main thing was a book about Dresden.

When a Benefit is wrongly conferred, the author of the Benefit may often be said to injure.

If I read a book that impresses me, I have to take myself firmly by the hand, before I mix with other people; otherwise they would think my mind rather queer.

I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it.

I’ve been asked this question so many times, do you feel you need to write a book for adults? No, I don’t need to write a book for adults.

It’s very difficult to regulate yourself, and if you learn to do that, well, it starts to spill over.

Governments don’t control people like they used to.

An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmaster of ever afterwards.

I like writing. I get cranky when I can’t. Yes, I write books back to back, and I work very hard on them.

Man is not the creature of circumstances, circumstances are the creatures of men. We are free agents, and man is more powerful than matter.

I don’t run restaurants that are out of control. We are about establishing phenomenal footholdings with talent.

Dickens, as you know, never got round to starting his home page.

The public is a ferocious beast; one must either chain it or flee from it.

Ebooks had to happen.

There is a soak-the-rich attitude in the air, a feeling that if you have a lot of money you must have got it by some ghastly means. I can quite happily say there was never any family money. All the money we got was mine, just from writing books.

Because the Internet is so new, we still don’t really understand what it is. We mistake it for a type of publishing or broadcasting, because that’s what we’re used to. So people complain that there’s a lot of rubbish online, or that it’s dominated by Americans, or that you can’t necessarily trust what you read on the Web.

When I was writing the Destiny’s Child songs, it was a big thing to be that young and taking control. And the label at the time didn’t know that we were going to be that successful, so they gave us all control. And I got used to it.

My first popular book, ‚A Brief History of Time,‘ aroused a great deal of interest, but many found it difficult to understand.

The book of female logic is blotted all over with tears, and Justice in their courts is forever in a passion.

Man is supposed to be the maker of his destiny. It is only partly true. He can make his destiny, only in so far as he is allowed by the Great Power.

A consistent anarchist must oppose private ownership of the means of production, and the wage-slavery which is a component of this system, as incompatible with the principle that labor must be freely undertaken and under the control of the producer.

It was 1996 and I was at a crossroads in my career. I had been working in Hollywood as a writer and was very unhappy. I had pitched an idea for a book some six months earlier, and the book packager, Joost Elffers, wanted me to write up a treatment for it.

Dickens is one of those authors who are well worth stealing.

Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty.

My favorite book is anything by Kurt Vonnegut – he’s my literary hero. I got to meet him several times, which was a great thrill for me. I don’t really remember what we talked about.

How long most people would look at the best book before they would give the price of a large turbot for it?

Whether I’m at the office, at home, or on the road, I always have a stack of books I’m looking forward to reading.

The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the goverment.

I don’t read books much.

If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut.

In matters of truth the fact that you don’t want to publish something is, nine times out of ten, a proof that you ought to publish it.

I’ve read a lot of books on the laws of attraction, and in my home, I have a big book on Muhammad Ali, which I’ve read because he is, like, a hero of mine, but other than that, no, I’m not a big reader.

I have written a book. This will come as quite a shock to some. They didn’t think I could read, much less write.

I’ve just always been a reader.

I’m very type-A, and many things in my life are about control and domination, but eating should be a submissive experience, where you let down your guard and enjoy the ride.

I cannot claim to have had a hard time publishing.

Look at a book. A book is the right size to be a book. They’re solar-powered. If you drop them, they keep on being a book. You can find your place in microseconds. Books are really good at being books, and no matter what happens, books will survive.

Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.

I’ve had all six of my books reach the New York Times bestseller list, which is especially rewarding seeing as I flunked out of high school twice because I couldn’t write. It just goes to show you that we learn from our mistakes.

These people are very unskilled in arms… with 50 men they could all be subjected and made to do all that one wished.

My own books drive themselves. I know roughly where a book is going to end, but essentially the story develops under my fingers. It’s just a matter of joining the dots.

People are terrified of me, and I want them to be.

Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed.

No, it’s not a very good story – its author was too busy listening to other voices to listen as closely as he should have to the one coming from inside.

With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon. You know all those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram and the holy water, and he’s like, yeah, he’s sure he can control the demon? Doesn’t work out.

Editor: a person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed.