Writing means sharing. It’s part of the human condition to want to share things – thoughts, ideas, opinions.

I am the freest author in the world.

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.

Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings – always darker, emptier and simpler.

In many ways, I’ve been writing personal stories all my life.

I liked to write from the time I was about 12 or 13. I loved to read. And since I only spoke to my brother, I would write down my thoughts. And I think I wrote some of the worst poetry west of the Rockies. But by the time I was in my 20s, I found myself writing little essays and more poetry – writing at writing.

You can stroke people with words.

I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.

We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us.

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.

It is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.

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 could speak three languages when I was six, and when I went to school, I only liked to read and sketch. At five, I could write and everything.

Brevity is the soul of wit.

It would be an egregious mistake to ever refer to me in the same breath as most of the people I write about.

I don’t know how much longer I’ll be around. I’ll probably be writing when the Lord says, ‚Maya, Maya Angelou, it’s time.‘

It usually helps me write by reading – somehow the reading gear in your head turns the writing gear.

Money is an unavoidable consequence, but it isn’t the reason I write; if it was, I wouldn’t have written any of the YA books, because advances in that field are small compared to what I’d got now for an ‚adult‘ DW.

You can write any time people will leave you alone and not interrupt you. Or, rather, you can if you will be ruthless enough about it. But the best writing is certainly when you are in love.

A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog.

Innovation is a good thing. The human condition – put aside bioterrorism and a few footnotes – is improving because of innovation.

I feel like I was writing as I was learning to talk. Writing was always a go-to form of communication. And I knew I could sing from being in tune with the radio.

We like to think about how smart we are. But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in, it’s all there, at least the basic elements of it. You can’t change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.

For a true writer, each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.

It seems almost backwards to me that my music seems the more emotional outlet, and the art stuff seems more about ideas.

People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them I have the heart of a small boy… and I keep it in a jar on my desk.

You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.

He who obtains has little. He who scatters has much.

Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.

Jane Austen is the pinnacle to which all other authors aspire.

To take a few nouns, and a few pronouns, and adverbs and adjectives, and put them together, ball them up, and throw them against the wall to make them bounce. That’s what Norman Mailer did. That’s what James Baldwin did, and Joan Didion did, and that’s what I do – that’s what I mean to do.

It’s not difficult for me to put my feelings into written form. I try to be concise and to go direct to the subject. This is what people like about my work, and what the critics hate.

I like to have strong opinions with nothing to back them up with besides my primal sincerity. I like sincerity. I lack sincerity.

What the Pope thinks of being gay does not matter to the world. It matters to the people who like the Pope and follow the Pope… It is not a reflection of all religious people.

If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.

Naturally, my stories are about women – I’m a woman. I don’t know what the term is for men who write mostly about men. I’m not always sure what is meant by ‚feminist.‘ In the beginning, I used to say, ‚Well, of course I’m a feminist.‘ But if it means that I follow a kind of feminist theory, or know anything about it, then I’m not.

He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool.

I have my favorite cat, who is my paperweight, on my desk while I am writing.

Some things get written more quickly than others, but I can’t really measure degrees of difficulty.

I’m a writer, and I will write what I want to write.

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.

It’s funny because I’ve made a living off of words, but words get in the way of what you really want to say.

What’s important for my daughter to know is that… if you are fortunate to have opportunity, it is your duty to make sure other people have those opportunities as well.

Eloquence is a painting of the thoughts.

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

I know that one of the great arts that the writer develops is the art of saying, ‚No. No, I’m finished. Bye.‘ And leaving it alone. I will not write it into the ground. I will not write the life out of it. I won’t do that.

I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do ever – was write novels.

For a dinner date, I eat light all day to save room, then I go all in: I choose this meal and this order, and I choose you, the person across from me, to share it with. There’s a beautiful intimacy in a meal like that.

The most deeply personal of my works are the non-fiction works, the autobiographical works, because there, I’m talking about myself very directly.

All of my writing is God-given.

The good old days, when each idea had an owner, are gone forever.

Almost any biographer, if he respects facts, can give us much more than another fact to add to our collection. He can give us the creative fact; the fertile fact; the fact that suggests and engenders.

Poetry comes from the highest happiness or the deepest sorrow.

I write all of my own speeches.

I work all day, do research, sketch my ideas, prepare for performances.

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.

The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.

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

I always have to be writing.

When everything works best, it’s not because you chose writing but because writing chose you. It’s when you’re mad with it, it’s when it’s stuffed in your ears, your nostrils, under your fingernails. It’s when there’s no hope but that.

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.