A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one, it comes as sincerely from the author’s soul.

The best author will be the one who is ashamed to become a writer.

I wanted to write.

Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy – which many believe goes hand in hand with it – will be dead as well.

I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence.

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.

The mind of a 19-year-old is very different from the mind of a 26-year-old. You grow. You get into better relationships. You experience more, meet more people, better people. But when you’re in a dark hole at an earlier point in your life – you write about the mindset you’re in at that moment.

A word after a word after a word is power.

Syntax, my lad. It has been restored to the highest place in the republic.

Practically everybody in New York has half a mind to write a book, and does.

We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.

I started out in life as a poet; I was only writing poetry all through my 20s. It wasn’t until I was about 30 that I got serious about writing prose. While I was writing poems, I would often divert myself by reading detective novels; I liked them.

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.

Shakespeare didn’t work at all for me.

If a secret history of books could be written, and the author’s private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!

I want to be an honest man and a good writer.

Wherever you write is supposed to be a little bit of a refuge, a place where you can get away from the world. The more closed in you are, the more you’re forced back on your own imagination.

No, it’s not a very good story – its author was too busy listening to other voices to listen as closely as he should have to the one coming from inside.

You can’t learn to write in college. It’s a very bad place for writers because the teachers always think they know more than you do – and they don’t. They have prejudices. They may like Henry James, but what if you don’t want to write like Henry James? They may like John Irving, for instance, who’s the bore of all time.

I started out as a poet. I’ve always been a poet since I was 7 or 8. And so I feel myself to be fundamentally a poet who got into writing novels.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.

I am 55 years old now. It takes three years to write one book. I don’t know how many books I will be able to write before I die. It is like a countdown. So with each book I am praying – please let me live until I am finished.

I think it does Discworld good if I don’t write about it all the time: sometimes you have to get it out of your system.

Most rock journalism is people who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, for people who can’t read.

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.

I start each book when it’s ready and never before.

All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.

I’m writing a book. I’ve got the page numbers done.

The thing about the 600 words, I mean some day, you can do a very, very, very hard day’s work and not write a word, just revising, or you would scribble a few words.

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

Sincere Christians can disagree about the details of Scripture and theology – absolutely.

Nothing induces me to read a novel except when I have to make money by writing about it. I detest them.

I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good.

When an author is too meticulous about his style, you may presume that his mind is frivolous and his content flimsy.

When I was researching my book ‚The 33 Strategies of War‘, I studied Napoleon extensively and I found myself wanting to ask Napoleon questions about things he did, and if was I interpreting his actions correctly.

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

While working on my first five books, I kept wishing I was writing a novel. I thought until you wrote a novel, you weren’t taken seriously as a writer. It used to trouble me a lot, but nothing troubles me now, and besides, there has been a change. I think short stories are taken more seriously now than they were.

Beautiful sentences pop into my head. Beautiful sentences that aren’t always absolutely accurate. Then, I have to choose between the beautiful sentence and being absolutely accurate. It can be a difficult choice.

You don’t have to be a renowned artist like Q-Tip to try your hand at poetry. You don’t need any special equipment – that’s the beauty of it.

It is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one’s own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane.

Since I have come to America, I am often asked whether my next novel will be set in America. I don’t think it will. I think I will be living in America for some time to come, but while living in America, I would like to write about Japanese society from the outside.

When I write, I try to become different characters.

There is no sincerer love than the love of food.

In my later years, I have looked in the mirror each day and found a happy person staring back. Occasionally I wonder why I can be so happy. The answer is that every day of my life I’ve worked only for myself and for the joy that comes from writing and creating. The image in my mirror is not optimistic, but the result of optimal behavior.

You can stroke people with words.

There’s an ecstatic side to writing. It’s like jazz. It just has a life.

I only type every third night. I have no plan. My mind is a blank. I sit down. The typewriter gives me things I don’t even know I’m working on. It’s a free lunch. A free dinner. I don’t know how long it is going to continue, but so far there is nothing easier than writing.

To hold a pen is to be at war.

When I do have free time, I spend it with friends, or I spend it at home writing or making something.

I think history is collective memories. In writing, I’m using my own memory, and I’m using my collective memory.

One of my big goals as a human being is to continue to write what’s really happening to me, even if it’s a tough pill to swallow for people around me… I do fear that if I ever were to have someone in my life who mattered, I would second-guess every one of my lyrics.

I ain’t never far away from a pencil and paper or a tape recorder.

You’re not going to make Hemingway better by adding animations.

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.

I like working-class people, generally speaking.

I was terrible at straight items. When I wrote obituaries, my mother said the only thing I ever got them to do was die in alphabetical order.

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.

After you finish a book, you know, you’re dead. But no one knows you’re dead. All they see is the irresponsibility that comes in after the terrible responsibility of writing.

Paradise Lost is a book that, once put down, is very hard to pick up again.

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.

First of all, you ask me if the God of Christians forgives one who doesn’t believe and doesn’t seek the faith. Premise that – and it’s the fundamental thing – the mercy of God has no limits if one turns to him with a sincere and contrite heart; the question for one who doesn’t believe in God lies in obeying one’s conscience.