I was warped early by Ray Bradbury and Edgar Allan Poe. I was very fond of Franz Kafka.

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.

I really like hip-hop and rap; that’s my main influence. I really wanna be more of a hip-hop artist.

I’m not a big believer in trying to jam stuff down somebody’s throat: ‚You’re going to do it my way.‘ I’d rather show by example and live my life and have people say, ‚You know what, I want to live like Joel has. He’s got peace and joy, and he seems content.‘

Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.

I think the personal relationships I established mattered in terms of what I was able to get done. And I did bring women’s issues to the center of our foreign policy.

Everything rises and falls on leadership.

I think members of the legislature, people who have to run for office, know the connection between money and influence on what laws get passed.

People are like dirt. They can either nourish you and help you grow as a person or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die.

Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.

A great value of antiquity lies in the fact that its writings are the only ones that modern men still read with exactness.

A general is just as good or just as bad as the troops under his command make him.

Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new at all.

The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.

I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.

I have a cult-like following because I exemplify what it is to be a human being.

If you want to influence people, you want them to accept your suggestions, you don’t say, ‚You don’t know how to use the English language,‘ or ‚How could you make that argument?‘ It will be welcomed much more if you have a gentle touch than if you are aggressive.

Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is.

It’s not easy to define poetry.

What I can say is that all my characters are searching for their souls, because they are my mirrors. I’m someone who is constantly trying to understand my place in the world, and literature is the best way that I found in order to see myself.

Shakespeare – I was very influenced – still am – by Shakespeare. I couldn’t believe that a white man in the 16th century could so know my heart.

Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.

I think ‚The Color Purple‘ is so bursting with love, the need for connection, the showing of the need for connection around the globe.

Our enemy, the devil, wants to control us, and his target is our will. The main way he tries to influence our will is through lying to us.

I’m not going to get into the ring with Tolstoy.

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

The man who can dominate a London dinner-table can dominate the world.

Charlotte Bronte was writing about sex. I supposed Jane Austen was, too. Where do you get a hero like Darcy unless you are writing about sex?

Burroughs is crap. Crap.

Character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion.

In the end, people are persuaded not by what we say, but by what they understand.

If I’m the people’s poet, then I ought to be in people’s hands – and, I hope, in their heart.

After you finish a book, you know, you’re dead. But no one knows you’re dead. All they see is the irresponsibility that comes in after the terrible responsibility of writing.

The United States tyrannizes and pillages the globalized world with its political, economic, technological, and military might.

I don’t go around thinking I’m Ray Bradbury all the time.

When I was growing up, there was nobody in my family – not even my mother – who I could look to and be like, ‚I know you’ve never said anything homophobic.‘ So, you know, you worry about people in the business who you’ve heard talk that way. Some of my heroes coming up talk recklessly like that.

Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will.

Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind and – since there is no other metaphor – also the soul.

There are massive efforts on the part of the internet’s corporate owners to try to direct it to become a technique of marginalisation and control.

Actually, to be an effective person politically in this country, I think you have to be thirty or over, and also you have to be rich, well-placed, you have to be close to power. And I don’t think that young people, because they look young, can do much, as I think they are counterproductive.

Kids are watching us. I experience it every single day. They hang on my every word, what I wear, what I say.

Affluence means influence.

Everybody is a political person, whether you say something or you are silent. A political attitude is not whether you go to parliament; it’s how you deal with your life, with your surroundings.

I’ve just always been a reader.

Satire lies about literary men while they live and eulogy lies about them when they die.

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.

We live in a day that nobody’s lived in before: where you can touch more people. The message I’ll speak tonight and the message that I speak at home, people in India will hear. It’s just an amazing day.

The rudiment of verse may, possibly, be found in the spondee.

Yes, there is a terrible moral in ‚Dorian Gray‘ – a moral which the prurient will not be able to find in it, but it will be revealed to all whose minds are healthy. Is this an artistic error? I fear it is. It is the only error in the book.

He who wishes to be obeyed must know how to command.

Poetry has done enough when it charms, but prose must also convince.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary.

I feel like I’m changing pop culture.

I don’t think that a leader can control, to any great extent, his destiny. Very seldom can he step in and change the situation if the forces of history are running in another direction.

If it weren’t for the Beatles, I would not be a musician.

There would be no Sherlock Holmes if it were not for serial publication.

I’ve loved reading all my life.

O God, O God, how weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world!

The strongest influences in my life and my work are always whomever I love. Whomever I love and am with most of the time, or whomever I remember most vividly. I think that’s true of everyone, don’t you?

More people should read books. It’s the most concentrated experience you can have.

Remember that the essence of authority is that people willingly follow your lead.