Reduce your plan to writing. The moment you complete this, you will have definitely given concrete form to the intangible desire.

Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.

If you care enough for a result, you will most certainly attain it.

I cry very easily. It can be a movie, a phone conversation, a sunset – tears are words waiting to be written.

Writing is a solitary experience. I’m extremely superstitious. If I talk about the book or name the title out loud before finishing, I feel the energy I need to write will be drained. It’s so intimate, I can’t even share it with my wife.

It seemed like a very small possibility for me to become an artist. I didn’t have the need to be on the stage; I didn’t feel the need to be heard. I just needed to write.

Writing is the most fun you can have by yourself.

You know, as a writer, I’m more of a listener than a writer, cuz if I hear something I will write it down.

All fiction is about people, unless it’s about rabbits pretending to be people. It’s all essentially characters in action, which means characters moving through time and changes taking place, and that’s what we call ‚the plot‘.

If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.

Hundreds of people who’ve never written before send in ‚Dr. Who‘ scripts. They may have good ideas, but what they fail to realise is that writing for TV is incredibly complicated. They have no idea how difficult it is and what the financial commitment is.

Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning.

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

The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, familiar things new.

I started writing at the kitchen table after midnight. It took ten months to finish that first book; I sent it to a publisher and I got some kind of prize, so it was like a dream – I was surprised to find it happening.

Being self-made means never making an excuse as to why you can’t take steps toward whatever your goal is.

Winners make a habit of manufacturing their own positive expectations in advance of the event.

If you can talk, you can write.

Small aim is a crime.

Some of our earliest writing, in cuneiform, was about who owes what.

I don’t care much for equations myself. This is partly because it is difficult for me to write them down, but mainly because I don’t have an intuitive feeling for equations.

You can always amend a big plan, but you can never expand a little one. I don’t believe in little plans. I believe in plans big enough to meet a situation which we can’t possibly foresee now.

I just wanted to write something about running, but I realized that to write about my running is to write about my writing. It’s a parallel thing in me.

I’ve tried to reduce profanity but I reduced so much profanity when writing the book that I’m afraid not much could come out. Perhaps we will have to consider it simply as a profane book and hope that the next book will be less profane or perhaps more sacred.

Want balance in your life? Then sure, get your own act together, but don’t forget four powerful disciplines of execution in your team and organization.

What prudent merchant will hazard his fortunes in any new branch of commerce when he knows not that his plans may be rendered unlawful before they can be executed?

A man’s got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.

It’s really easy to have a nice philosophy about openness, but moving the world in that direction is a different thing. It requires both understanding where you want to go and being pragmatic about getting there.

It is reasonable to have perfection in our eye that we may always advance toward it, though we know it can never be reached.

I’ve been writing poems since I was in the Navy – to Rosalynn. I found I could say things in poems that I never could in prose. Deeper, more personal things. I could write a poem about my mother that I could never tell my mother. Or feelings about being on a submarine that I would have been too embarrassed to share with fellow submariners.

‚The New Yorker‘ was really my first experience with serious editing. Previously, I’d more or less just had copyediting with a few suggestions – not much.

Before beginning, plan carefully.

It isn’t sufficient just to want – you’ve got to ask yourself what you are going to do to get the things you want.

For me, writing a novel is like having a dream. Writing a novel lets me intentionally dream while I’m still awake. I can continue yesterday’s dream today, something you can’t normally do in everyday life.

Becoming a writer is not a ‚career decision‘ like becoming a doctor or a policeman. You don’t choose it so much as get chosen, and once you accept the fact that you’re not fit for anything else, you have to be prepared to walk a long, hard road for the rest of your days.

He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.

‚Lives‘ is one of those books I should really have written when I was younger. It is the classic childhood, adolescence, breakthrough-into-maturity book. Every beginning writer has that material – and after that, you’re not sure what you can do.

Many people tell me that they don ‚t know what to feel when they finish one of my books because the story was dark, or complicated, or strange. But while they were reading it, they were inside my world and they were happy. That’s good.

If I’d known how much packing I’d have to do, I’d have run again.

What I have is a malevolent curiosity. That’s what drives my need to write and what probably leads me to look at things a little askew. I do tend to take a different perspective from most people.

Anticipate the difficult by managing the easy.

The more nobly a man wills and acts, the more avid he becomes for great and sublime aims to pursue. He will no longer be content with family, country, and the remunerative aspect of his work. He will want wider organisations to create, new paths to blaze, causes to uphold, truths to discover, an ideal to cherish and defend.

Frankly, I mean, sometimes the interpretations I’ve seen on some of the songs that I’ve written are a lot more interesting than the input that I put in.

Know what you want to do, hold the thought firmly, and do every day what should be done, and every sunset will see you that much nearer to your goal.

My future is righteousness.

An author writes a book, and that’s the book at that point. And if the author writes the book again, then somehow something has gone wrong, if you see what I mean.

I can have people around a lot more because I’m not always chasing them away so I can work on my novel. My non-novel, I mean.

I think it’s quite great to set yourself a big challenge, and then you’ve got another reason for keeping fit.

Forethought we may have, undoubtedly, but not foresight.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.

I write screenplays in the middle of the night.

It’s an awful feeling to write something that you feel is really important… and to feel that you’re being published by people who really don’t get it and/or don’t really care.

I write because writing is something that I have to do. And it doesn’t matter whether people like it or not. When I write, I feel the pressure and anxiety that come with taking an empty piece of paper and trying to fill it with something from your own consciousness.

The battle is all over except the ‚shouting‘ when one knows what is wanted and has made up his mind to get it, whatever the price may be.

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.

I have owed you this letter for a very long time-but my fingers have avoided the pencil as though it were an old and poisoned tool.

When I was 16, I started publishing all kinds of things in school magazines.

Language is the dress of thought.

I’m not a writer who teaches. I’m a teacher who writes.

You fail only if you stop writing.

If one could be friendly with women, what a pleasure – the relationship so secret and private compared with relations with men. Why not write about it truthfully?