Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes the pressure off the second.

Dialogue means debates and everyone’s point of view.

I remember the first time I heard a teenager say ‚LOL.‘ Just what? But it means ‚laugh.‘ Why don’t you just laugh? What are you doing?

We awaken in others the same attitude of mind we hold toward them.

‚Two Voices,‘ from my album with Peter Schwalm, is an intact dream-poem. I awoke one night with an image of a piece of paper and all the words of the poem written on it, so I just blundered down to the kitchen table and ‚copied it out.‘

It may be the part of a friend to rebuke a friend’s folly.

All I wanted to do was write – at the time, poems, and prose, too. I guess my ambition was simply to make money however I could to keep myself going in some modest way, and I didn’t need much, I was unmarried at the time, no children.

When you have nothing important or interesting to say, don’t let anyone persuade you to say it.

A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still: you must not want to see everything.

Having listened to great songwriters like James Taylor and Carole King, I felt there was nothing new that was coming out that really represented me and the way I felt. So I started writing my own stuff.

I think the reason my stories have been so successful is that I have a strong sense of metaphor.

Words are loaded pistols.

The short words are best, and the old words are the best of all.

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.

A novel is a work of poetry. In order to write it, one must have tranquility of spirit and of impression.

What makes you a SEAL, what makes you a SEAL is being a good tactician on the battle field, understanding how to shoot, move, and communicate, knowing small unit maneuver warfare. That’s what makes a good SEAL, and so that is the course of instruction that I taught, was getting SEAL platoons ready for deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.

O wise man! Give your wealth only to the worthy and never to others. The water of the sea received by the clouds is always sweet.

I soothe my conscience now with the thought that it is better for hard words to be on paper than that Mummy should carry them in her heart.

It is very hard to not be able to engage with people in a real and honest way because they either want something from me, or they see me as something that I simply am not.

Saying nothing… sometimes says the most.

The more you are talked about the less powerful you are.

The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef; love, like being enlivened with champagne.

The mouth obeys poorly when the heart murmurs.

The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.

All through my writing life, I’ve had this impulse to write autobiographical works.

Facebook and Instagram are both really popular with teens, both in the U.S. and globally across the world. I think what you’re starting to see is that there are all these different ways that people want to share and communicate.

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.

He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words.

If one plays good music, people don’t listen and if one plays bad music people don’t talk.

A yawn is a silent shout.

The thing about hip-hop today is it’s smart, it’s insightful. The way they can communicate a complex message in a very short space is remarkable.

Excessive literary production is a social offense.

I would rather try to persuade a man to go along, because once I have persuaded him, he will stick. If I scare him, he will stay just as long as he is scared, and then he is gone.

The great fun in my life has been getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter because some new idea has hit me.

Nothing is so unbelievable that oratory cannot make it acceptable.

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.

They say it is the first step that costs the effort. I do not find it so. I am sure I could write unlimited ‚first chapters‘. I have indeed written many.

It is healthier, in any case, to write for the adults one’s children will become than for the children one’s ‚mature‘ critics often are.

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.

Writing bores me so.

I just think you ought to talk straight with your people.

Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are awake, intentionally. So I get up early in the morning, 4 o’clock, and I sit at my desk and what I do is just dream. After three or four hours, that’s enough. In the afternoon, I run. The next day, the dream will continue.

I don’t understand why or how we can bully each other.

I write all of my own speeches.

Writing is challenging work because it’s so easy to get consumed with how it’s going, what’s going to happen to it, who’s going to like or not like it. You want to get all of that stuff out of your head and just let the work flow.

Silence speaks so much louder than screaming tantrums. Never give anyone an excuse to say that you’re crazy.

I tend to approach things from a physics framework. And physics teaches you to reason from first principles rather than by analogy.

A great empire, like a great cake, is most easily diminished at the edges.

By giving people the power to share, we’re making the world more transparent.

Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.

Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.

The American public’s a lot more sophisticated than we all give them credit for. And on complicated issues, I’m going to give them straight answers. And if it takes more than three minutes, I’m going to do it.

Give thy thoughts no tongue.

A quarrel is quickly settled when deserted by one party; there is no battle unless there be two.

We can’t just choose to tell some facts and not others because we don’t want to upset people. We have to tell it like it is.

The major advances in speed of communication and ability to interact took place more than a century ago. The shift from sailing ships to telegraph was far more radical than that from telephone to email!

I’m actually a very honest person, and sometimes I end up like, ‚Man, I said too much.‘ It’s hard for me not to tell the truth when you ask me.

I wanted to be a doctor that I might be able to work without having to talk because for years I had been giving myself out in words.

Words are more powerful than some noises. Noises won’t last long. Lyrics are so important, and people don’t realise that.

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.

Of course you can’t ‚trust‘ what people tell you on the web anymore than you can ‚trust‘ what people tell you on megaphones, postcards or in restaurants. Working out the social politics of who you can trust and why is, quite literally, what a very large part of our brain has evolved to do.