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

For just when ideas fail, a word comes in to save the situation.

But I think there are a set of experiences that turn a potential writer into a working writer, and then there are places in your life were you start to recognize what you want to do.

I don’t generally read reviews.

What my character is or how many jails I have lounged in, or wards or walls or wassails, how many lonely-heart poetry readings I have dodged, is beside the point. A man’s soul or lack of it will be evident with what he can carve upon a white sheet of paper.

You ask me if I keep a notebook to record my great ideas. I’ve only ever had one.

Eating words has never given me indigestion.

Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.

In my younger days, I was trying to write sophisticated prose and fantastic stories.

It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else.

I have an obsession with knowing the answers to things. When I don’t know what happened, it just bothers me, gets under my skin, and I need to write about it.

If you wish to be a writer, write.

No, there is literally nothing on the business side that I wouldn’t sacrifice in a heartbeat to have an extra couple of hours‘ writing. Nothing.

When we are thinking about stuff like embeds, we are not thinking about how we are competing with YouTube. We are thinking about how are we going to make it more useful for people to share stuff on Facebook.

Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.

But behavior in the human being is sometimes a defense, a way of concealing motives and thoughts, as language can be a way of hiding your thoughts and preventing communication.

Ideas are the beginning points of all fortunes.

I speak to the black experience, but I am always talking about the human condition.

The most important thing is to read as much as you can, like I did. It will give you an understanding of what makes good writing and it will enlarge your vocabulary.

I would be a liar, a hypocrite, or a fool – and I’m not any of those – to say that I don’t write for the reader. I do. But for the reader who hears, who really will work at it, going behind what I seem to say. So I write for myself and that reader who will pay the dues.

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.

Men use thought only as authority for their injustice, and employ speech only to conceal their thoughts.

If you are an American, you must allow all ideas to circulate freely in your community, not merely your own.

Somebody just back of you while you are fishing is as bad as someone looking over your shoulder while you write a letter to your girl.

Working with a guy like Ice Cube on ‚Ride Along,‘ you learn so much. He’s a guy who produces, writes, and directs, so you watch and learn and ask questions. As you go, you learn and figure out what you should and shouldn’t do. I do nothing but soak up information.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

The first real thought that I had of something that I might do was to write for car magazines, because I always had a car thing.

Lulled in the countless chambers of the brain, our thoughts are linked by many a hidden chain; awake but one, and in, what myriads rise!

‚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.

A poet never takes notes. You never take notes in a love affair.

I think, in politics, half the people are gonna like you, and half the people are not gonna like you, no matter what you do or what you say… It’s like there are no right answers. If there were, everyone would choose the right answers. They’re all opinions.

The existentialist says at once that man is anguish.

One is lucky to be born in a place where no one is doing it, because then you can say, ‚Well, obviously I can write better than everyone else in high school.‘ You have no idea of the competition.

Everything in the world exists to end up in a book.

The oppression of any people for opinion’s sake has rarely had any other effect than to fix those opinions deeper, and render them more important.

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.

Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it.

In writing, I apply my feminine side and respect the mystery involved in creation.

In all seriousness, people think that it’s the ideas that are important. Well, everyone has ideas, all the time. I tend to write mine down and remember them, but at some point you have to apply the bum to the seat and knock out about sixty five thousand words – that’s how long a novel is.

Writing makes you feel that there is a reason to go on living. If I couldn’t write, I would stop breathing.

In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.

Convictions, in the end, they can be dangerous, but a world without them is just kind of an awful kind of gray, amorphous mass.

If you had a million Shakespeares, could they write like a monkey?

I undertake the same project as Montaigne, but with an aim contrary to his own: for he wrote his Essays only for others, and I write my reveries only for myself.

I never write about the road. I never write about hotels or anything like that.

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

The last people with any ideas are young people.

What is the use of writing plays, what is the use of writing anything, if there is not a will which finally moulds chaos itself into a race of gods.

Meditation has been a loyal friend to me. It has helped me write my books.

As I read more and more – and it was not all verse, by any means – my love for the real life of words increased until I knew that I must live with them and in them, always. I knew, in fact, that I must be a writer of words, and nothing else.

The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation.

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.

The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.

You do things when the opportunities come along. I’ve had periods in my life when I’ve had a bundle of ideas come along, and I’ve had long dry spells. If I get an idea next week, I’ll do something. If not, I won’t do a damn thing.

Whether or not I like a piece of data has very little bearing on whether or not I am likely to accept it.

Ideas excite me, and as soon as I get excited, the adrenaline gets going and the next thing I know I’m borrowing energy from the ideas themselves.

America’s experience, like many others, teaches us that fostering entrepreneurship is not just about crafting the right economic policy or developing the best educated curricula. It’s about creating an entire climate in which innovation and ideas flourish.

College isn’t in everyone’s hearts. I am living proof, though, that school doesn’t mess up your plans. It gives you more experiences to write about.

If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.

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