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.

I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library, and it’s better than college. People should educate themselves – you can get a complete education for no money. At the end of 10 years, I had read every book in the library and I’d written a thousand stories.

I don’t write the books. God writes the books and delivers the speeches.

Writing and cookery are just two different means of communication.

Hundreds of people who’ve never written before send in ‚Dr. Who‘ scripts. They may have good ideas, but what they fail to realise is that writing for TV is incredibly complicated. They have no idea how difficult it is and what the financial commitment is.

When I worked on a magazine, I learned that there are many, many writers writing that can’t write at all; and they keep on writing all the cliches and bromides and 1890 plots, and poems about Spring and poems about Love, and poems they think are modern because they are done in slang or staccato style, or written with all the ‚i’s‘ small.

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.

We need an adult in the White House. When making life-or-death, war-or-peace decisions, a president can’t just pop off or lash out irrationally.

I cry very easily. It can be a movie, a phone conversation, a sunset – tears are words waiting to be written.

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

When I am working on a book or a story, I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you, and it is cool or cold, and you come to your work and warm as you write.

The first book I ever really read was Plato’s ‚Republic,‘ and then I had to go over that five times or something.

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

I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do ever – was write novels.

I just wanted to write something about running, but I realized that to write about my running is to write about my writing. It’s a parallel thing in me.

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

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.

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

Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn.

We have an obligation and a responsibility to be investing in our students and our schools. We must make sure that people who have the grades, the desire and the will, but not the money, can still get the best education possible.

He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.

People make a big fuss over you when you’re President. But I’m very serious about doing everything I can to make sure that it doesn’t go to my head.

I tweet in the morning and the evening. To write 12 hours a day, there is a moment when you’re really tired. It’s my relaxing time.

Look at a book. A book is the right size to be a book. They’re solar-powered. If you drop them, they keep on being a book. You can find your place in microseconds. Books are really good at being books, and no matter what happens, books will survive.

Books are alive, you see. They’re not dead, they’re alive.

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

I guess, taking away all the theatrics or the costuming and the outer layers of what I do, I’m a writer… I write.

It’s when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order to simply make a poem, that you fail.

If I waited for perfection… I would never write a word.

No other country in the world does what we do. On every issue, the world turns to us, not simply because of the size of our economy or our military might – but because of the ideals we stand for, and the burdens we bear to advance them.

Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.

Giving responsibility is the key to success with boys, especially with the rowdiest and most difficult boys.

At age nine, I got a paper route. Sixty-six papers had to be delivered to sixty-six families every day. I also had to collect thirty cents a week from each customer. I owed the paper twenty cents per customer per week, and got to keep the rest. When I didn’t collect, the balance came out of my profit. My average income was six dollars a week.

Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

We like to think about how smart we are. But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in, it’s all there, at least the basic elements of it. You can’t change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.

Eating words has never given me indigestion.

I don’t do research. I never have.

‚Classic.‘ A book which people praise and don’t read.

Sure, women sportswriters look when they’re in the clubhouse. Read their stories. How else do you explain a capital letter in the middle of a word?

I’ve been asked this question so many times, do you feel you need to write a book for adults? No, I don’t need to write a book for adults.

I started writing as a child. But I didn’t think of myself actually writing until I was in college. And I had gone to Africa as a sophomore or something – no, maybe junior – and wrote a book of poems. And that was my beginning. I published that book.

What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.

We did not choose to be the guardians of the gate, but there is no one else.

Scientists are not delinquents. Our work has changed the conditions in which men live, but the use made of these changes is the problem of governments, not of scientists.

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

I wrote a few children’s books… not on purpose.

When we assumed the Soldier, we did not lay aside the Citizen.

People are more aware now of cities and of different ways of life. I suppose the writing I do is a bit in the past, and I’m not sure it’s the kind of writing I would do if I were starting now.

Write injuries in dust, benefits in marble.

I don’t tell anyone how to write and no one tells me.

I think we have a duty to maintain the light of consciousness to make sure it continues into the future.

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.

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.

From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid out in books. Pleased with the ‚Pilgrim’s Progress,‘ my first collection was of John Bunyan’s works in separate little volumes.

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 was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything.

An individual step in character training is to put responsibility on the individual.

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 took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.

I want to marry Arline because I love her – which means I want to take care of her. That is all there is to it. I want to take care of her. I am anxious for the responsibilities and uncertainties of taking care of the girl I love.