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?

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.

Like a pianist runs her fingers over the keys, I’ll search my mind for what to say. Now, the poem may want you to write it. And then sometimes you see a situation and think, ‚I’d like to write about that.‘ Those are two different ways of being approached by a poem, or approaching a poem.

If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on.

Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.

He that has not got a wife is not yet a complete man.

Love one another, but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

I was extremely lucky that I had two great wives. It sounds a bit funny to say that, but it’s absolutely true.

Van Gogh never made a penny in his entire lifetime. He painted because it was his soul, his excitement. It was what aligned him with his Source of being. It’s the same with me and writing.

We are motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is the more he is inspired by glory. The very philosophers themselves, even in those books which they write in contempt of glory, inscribe their names.

We cannot always assure the future of our friends; we have a better chance of assuring our future if we remember who our friends are.

Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?

I’ve been writing my entire life, and I’ll always write.

I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.

When the people we love stop paying attention, trust begins to slip away and hurt starts seeping in.

My most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me.

No man should be in politics unless he would honestly rather not be there.

As a matter of self-preservation, a man needs good friends or ardent enemies, for the former instruct him and the latter take him to task.

There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.

Lettin‘ the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier ‚n puttin‘ it back in.

Love is about mutual respect, apart from attraction.

Always be sincere, even if you don’t mean it.

That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to be, when it suits him, a coward.

The main problem with writing in verse is, if your fourth line doesn’t come out right, you’ve got to throw four lines away and figure out a whole new way to attack the problem. So the mortality rate is terrific.

If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water.

Never injure a friend, even in jest.

Those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.

I knew I wanted to do something creative. I didn’t think I’d have the luxury of doing something like that, because I didn’t know anyone who had pursued anything they really adored, but I had dreams for singing or writing.

I don’t think you get successful to brag and throw what you have in the world’s face. That’s all private.

The most interesting information comes from children, for they tell all they know and then stop.

Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.

The essence of lying is in deception, not in words.

I think everyone should approach relationships from the perspective of playing it straight and giving someone the benefit of the doubt. Until he establishes that this is a game. And if it’s a game, you need to win. The best thing to do is just walk away from the table.

I think I have to trust that you end up with the person you’re supposed to end up with, and that everything in between is there to teach you stuff.

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

A person should not be too honest. Straight trees are cut first and honest people are screwed first.

I first had the idea of writing a popular book about the universe in 1982. My intention was partly to earn money to pay my daughter’s school fees.

Maxim for life: You get treated in life the way you teach people to treat you.

The secret to a long marriage is to stay gone.

It’s fun to be hopelessly in love. It’s dangerous, but it’s fun.

Whatever woman may cast her lot with mine, should any ever do so, it is my intention to do all in my power to make her happy and contented; and there is nothing I can imagine that would make me more unhappy than to fail in the effort.

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

When we are in love we seem to ourselves quite different from what we were before.

Men always want to be a woman’s first love – women like to be a man’s last romance.

Love matches, so called, have illusion for their father and need for their mother.

In the spring of 1936, I was introduced by friends to Jean Tatlock. In the autumn, I began to court her. We were at least twice close enough to marriage to think of ourselves as engaged.

Once I’ve written something it does tend to run away from me. I don’t seem to have any part of it – it’s no longer my piece of writing.

Give yourself more opportunities for privacy, when you are not bombarded with duties and obligations. Privacy is not a rejection of those you love; it is your deserved respite for recharging your batteries.

Someone told me that each equation I included in the book would halve the sales.

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

Love is an interesting thing.

You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life.

A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.

All men hate the nagging.

Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.

My friends, there are no friends.

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.

If you cry over a guy, then your friends can’t date him. It can’t even be considered.

Throughout my life, I’ve always been really close with girls and made friends with girls. And I’ve always been a really sickly, feminine person anyhow, so I thought I was gay for a while because I didn’t find any of the girls in my high school attractive at all.

I’m more of an adventurous type than a relationship type.

Society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand.