If you feel that there’s the author and then the character, then the book is not working. People have a habit of identifying the author with the narrator, and you can’t, obviously, be all of the narrators in all of your books, or else you’d be a very strange person indeed.

One of my big goals as a human being is to continue to write what’s really happening to me, even if it’s a tough pill to swallow for people around me… I do fear that if I ever were to have someone in my life who mattered, I would second-guess every one of my lyrics.

Even those who write against fame wish for the fame of having written well, and those who read their works desire the fame of having read them.

Write injuries in dust, benefits in marble.

The book that convinced me I wanted to be a writer was ‚Crime and Punishment‘. I put the thing down after reading it in a fever over two or three days… I said, ‚If this is what a book can be, then that is what I want to do.‘

A properly balanced story provides an equal representation of the negative and positive attributes of, I could say the world, but it’s actually a being. ‚Harry Potter“s a good example. So Harry’s the hero, right. But he’s tainted with evil. There’s a dark and a light in every bit of that narrative. It’s well balanced.

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

George Orwell is half journalist, half fiction writer. I’m 100 percent fiction writer… I don’t want to write messages. I want to write good stories. I think of myself as a political person, but I don’t state my political messages to anybody.

Knowledge will give you power, but character respect.

Only Americans can hurt America.

I guess it’s flattering that everyone believed I was those characters, but it also is dehumanizing.

If you love something – and there are things that I love – you do want more and more and more of it, but that’s not the way to produce good work. So as an author, I need to write what I need to write.

Show me a hero and I’ll write you a tragedy.

I haven’t changed at all. I’m the same as when I was 11.

I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don’t trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance any day in the week, if there is anything to be got by it.

I got interested in reading very early, because a story was read to me, by Hans Christian Andersen, which was ‚The Little Mermaid,‘ and I don’t know if you remember ‚The Little Mermaid,‘ but it’s dreadfully sad. The little mermaid falls in love with this prince, but she cannot marry him because she is a mermaid.

Shakespeare didn’t work at all for me.

I don’t write the books. God writes the books and delivers the speeches.

Sometimes I get the start of a story from a memory, an anecdote, but that gets lost and is usually unrecognizable in the final story.

When I write, when I’m going hot, I don’t want to write more than four hours in a row. After that, you’re pushing it.

I’d have stopped writing years ago if it were for the money.

I am not part of the problem. I am a Republican.

I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

People think I’m a celebrity. I’m not a celebrity.

Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn’t matter. I’m not sure a bad person can write a good book, If art doesn’t make us better, then what on earth is it for.

I don’t think I’d ever make an album of just covers because I love writing my own music.

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

Excessive literary production is a social offense.

You do get certain publications in the States where, if things don’t go according to plan, they flip the story and it becomes very negative.

What is history but a fable agreed upon?

I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good.

Every story has its demands.

I don’t know how many good books I still have in me; I hope there are another four or five.

A sex symbol becomes a thing. I just hate to be a thing.

I think it does Discworld good if I don’t write about it all the time: sometimes you have to get it out of your system.

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.

Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.

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

Maybe every city has a unique sensibility, but we don’t have names for what they are or haven’t identified them all. We can’t pinpoint exactly what makes each city’s people unique yet.

Dreams are the touchstones of our character.

A bore is a person who opens his mouth and puts his feats in it.

A good character is the best tombstone. Those who loved you and were helped by you will remember you when forget-me-nots have withered. Carve your name on hearts, not on marble.

What is normal? Normal was yesterday. If you lose a leg, one day you’re hopping around on one leg, so you know the difference.

Never regret what you don’t write.

This is the mark of a really admirable man: steadfastness in the face of trouble.

Love is easy, and I love writing. You can’t resist love. You get an idea, someone says something, and you’re in love.

If you’re always under the pressure of real identity, I think that is somewhat of a burden.

Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory.

People are more aware now of cities and of different ways of life. I suppose the writing I do is a bit in the past, and I’m not sure it’s the kind of writing I would do if I were starting now.

I am what I am. A fighter.

I don’t think of myself as an artist. I’m just a guy who can write.

Lady Gaga is my name. If you know me, and you call me Stefani, you don’t really know me at all.

I just write what I wanted to write. I write what amuses me. It’s totally for myself. I never in my wildest dreams expected this popularity.

I feel like everything we do comes down to how it looks. Even no branding is branding. For example, you had no face or image to put to my music at first. That was branding.

India does not need to become anything else. India must become only India. This is a country that once upon a time was called the golden bird.

When I write, it’s like choosing which shoes I’m going to put on. More often than not, my lyrics are personal – but I sometimes have to put myself in other people’s shoes.

I had one incident where my daughter said that a girl asked if she was a brown person. I said, ‚We’re black. You have black people, white people, Chinese people, Hispanic people; we’re all brought up differently.‘

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.

If women were particular about men’s characters, they would never get married at all.

I’ve never had writer’s block.