A man’s got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.

Writing is like anything else – the more you do it, the better you get at it, the easier it comes, and the less concerned you’ll be about what’s going to happen to it, where it’s going, what it sounds like, whether it’s right.

I just kind of wake up with a new idea and new dreams every day, and I follow that dream, as they say.

When a train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark, you don’t throw away the ticket and jump off. You sit still and trust the engineer.

When I see a story, I ask: is this something I’d like to be in? Is this something I’d like to see? And if I’d like to see it, would I like to tell it?

The size of your success is measured by the strength of your desire; the size of your dream; and how you handle disappointment along the way.

I know some of the best Dolly Parton jokes. I made ‚em up myself.

All the breaks you need in life wait within your imagination, Imagination is the workshop of your mind, capable of turning mind energy into accomplishment and wealth.

I firmly believe that unless one has tasted the bitter pill of failure, one cannot aspire enough for success.

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

I’ve been trying to… Having been an English literary graduate, I’ve been trying to avoid the idea of doing art ever since. I think the idea of art kills creativity.

Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.

I’m happy to be a writer – of prose, poetry, every kind of writing. Every person in the world who isn’t a recluse, hermit or mute uses words. I know of no other art form that we always use.

Writing is like a ‚lust,‘ or like ‚scratching when you itch.‘ Writing comes as a result of a very strong impulse, and when it does come, I, for one, must get it out.

Art is not a treasure in the past or an importation from another land, but part of the present life of all living and creating peoples.

Accept the challenges so that you can feel the exhilaration of victory.

I’m not a very creative person, you know? I’m not really an art person. I’m not a great reader or writer or artist or musician.

I don’t see any boundaries between any of the art forms. I think they all inter-relate completely.

It’s not easy to define poetry.

If you can make a girl laugh, you can make her do anything.

Style is that which indicates how the writer takes himself and what he is saying. It is the mind skating circles around itself as it moves forward.

For me, I used to be shy towards journalism because it wasn’t poetry. And then I realized that the events that I covered in essays that became journalism were actually great because they inspired me, and they became my muse.

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

In Hollywood the woods are full of people that learned to write but evidently can’t read. If they could read their stuff, they’d stop writing.

What is Apple, after all? Apple is about people who think ‚outside the box,‘ people who want to use computers to help them change the world, to help them create things that make a difference, and not just to get a job done.

George Orwell is half journalist, half fiction writer. I’m 100 percent fiction writer… I don’t want to write messages. I want to write good stories. I think of myself as a political person, but I don’t state my political messages to anybody.

We will all fail in life, but nobody has to be a failure. Failing at a thing doesn’t make you a failure. You are only a failure when you quit trying.

When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.

And one more thing.

I’m sure we, the American people, are the butt of jokes by those in power.

Honestly, I never really put the mic down.

Everybody that I was in school with had an uncle or father in the law, and I started to realize that I was going to end up writing briefs for about ten years for these fellows who I thought I was smarter than. And I was kind of losing my feeling for that.

I worked my way up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty.

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 definitely wasn’t anything special when I first started but I think I adapted quite quickly into racing and it became a bit better slowly. All of cadets, the first four years of karting, I only won one proper race, one! Which was the British Open Championship at PFI and I started 21st and I won.

Every movie I make teaches me something. That’s why I keep making them.

Why is it that although it takes us years to get into our messes, we expect God to get us out of them in a few days?

Well, all comedy starts with anger. You get angry, and its never for a good reason, right? You know its not a good reason. And then you try and work it from there.

It is no good getting furious if you get stuck. What I do is keep thinking about the problem but work on something else. Sometimes it is years before I see the way forward. In the case of information loss and black holes, it was 29 years.

People think you have to go through something to write about it, and you absolutely do not. You can write about, like, a shoe. It’s a story.

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.

I remember straightening my hair because I wanted to be like everybody else, and now the fact that anybody would emulate what I do? It’s just funny.

I always was that person who was hard on myself and challenged myself no matter what I was doing, whether it was passing third grade or playing basketball.

Standing ovations have become far too commonplace. What we need are ovations where the audience members all punch and kick one another.

I would get out of school and go straight to my computer to create beats.

Generally, a writer of force is anywhere from 20 years to 200 years ahead of his generation.

I am a grafter.

I can get where some scientists would say comedians are crazy. What you have to understand: A lot of comedians are dealing with a dark passion. A lot of these are guys coming from a tumultuous life, including myself. Some people need outlets, a way to express yourself.

You know, my Grandpop Finnegan used to have an expression: he used to say, ‚Joey, the guy in Olyphant’s out of work, it’s an economic slowdown. When your brother-in-law’s out of work, it’s a recession. When you’re out of work, it’s a depression.‘

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.

My kind of composing is more like the work of a gardener. The gardener takes his seeds and scatters them, knowing what he is planting but not quite what will grow where and when – and he won’t necessarily be able to reproduce it again afterwards either.

Every one of my regrets has produced a song I’m proud of.

I thought it was magic to be able to catch something identically on tape and then be able to play around with it, run it backwards; I thought that was great for years.

A dream doesn’t become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work.

I grew up where, when a door closed, a window didn’t open. The only thing I had was cracks. I’d do everything to get through those cracks – scratch, claw, bite, push, bleed. Now the opportunity is here. The door is wide open, and it’s as big as a garage.

I write books back to back, and I work very hard on them.

As a songwriter, you respect and appreciate the writings of other people, and I often get asked, are there songs out there I wish I’d written? Yes. There’s many of them!

My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.

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

One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I’ll never know.

You see, God helps only people who work hard. That principle is very clear.