Charlotte Bronte was writing about sex. I supposed Jane Austen was, too. Where do you get a hero like Darcy unless you are writing about sex?

You can’t buy love, but you can pay heavily for it.

I’ve been writing poems since I was in the Navy – to Rosalynn. I found I could say things in poems that I never could in prose. Deeper, more personal things. I could write a poem about my mother that I could never tell my mother. Or feelings about being on a submarine that I would have been too embarrassed to share with fellow submariners.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.

I imagined being a famous writer would be like being like Jane Austen.

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.

When I was born in 1920, the auto was only 20 years old. Radio didn’t exist. TV didn’t exist. I was born at just the right time to write about all of these things.

The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.

It is a common enough case, that of a man being suddenly captivated by a woman nearly the opposite of his ideal.

Writing has always had that tactile quality for me. It’s a physical experience.

Language is the dress of thought.

I began writing at the age of 5, but there was a dark period between the ages of 8 and 16 when I didn’t write. I started again at 16 and have no idea why, but it was suddenly the only thing I wanted to do.

So that’s the dissenter’s hope: that they are writing not for today but for tomorrow.

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.

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.

I think it all comes back to being very selfish as an artist. I mean, I really do just write and record what interests me and I do approach the stage shows in much the same way.

But I think there are a set of experiences that turn a potential writer into a working writer, and then there are places in your life were you start to recognize what you want to do.

The first story I finished was when I was six years old.

A reader can never tell if it’s a real thimble or an imaginary thimble, because by the time you’re reading it, they’re the same. It’s a thimble. It’s in the book.

My advice is this. For Christ’s sake, don’t write a book that is suitable for a kid of 12 years old, because the kids who read who are 12 years old are reading books for adults. I read all of the James Bond books when I was about 11, which was approximately the right time to read James Bond books.

It’s an awful feeling to write something that you feel is really important… and to feel that you’re being published by people who really don’t get it and/or don’t really care.

I don’t think I’ve ever read poetry, ever. I’m not really book-smart.

The pen is mightier than the sword if the sword is very short, and the pen is very sharp.

I always have to be writing.

You know those things that you throw the twigs into and it spits them out? That’s what I do. The branches are like life, and I throw them into my head and some of it comes out as humor.

The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, familiar things new.

You fail only if you stop writing.

I always wanted a great love affair: something that feels big and full, really honest, and enough. No moment should feel slight, false, or a little off. For me, it had to be everything.

Among the letters my readers write me, there is a certain category which is continuously growing, and which I see as a symptom of the increasing intellectualization of the relationship between readers and literature.

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

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

I’m always just surprised when someone writes something about me.

Among all kinds of Writing, there is none in which Authors are more apt to miscarry than in Works of Humour, as there is none in which they are more ambitious to excel.

I don’t set out to write about spirituality; I am free to do something different every time.

Writing is my love. If you love something, you find a lot of time. I write for two hours a day, usually starting at midnight; at times, I start at 11.

I love a good Dorothy L. Sayers.

My books are like water; those of the great geniuses are wine. (Fortunately) everybody drinks water.

How far that little candle throws its beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.

Whether I’m at the office, at home, or on the road, I always have a stack of books I’m looking forward to reading.

For me, a paragraph in a novel is a bit like a line in a poem. It has its own shape, its own music, its own integrity.

Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it.

And as a writer, one of the things that I’ve always been interested in doing is actually invading your comfort space. Because that’s what we’re supposed to do. Get under your skin, and make you react.

Books that you carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are most useful after all.

A great value of antiquity lies in the fact that its writings are the only ones that modern men still read with exactness.

One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.

Doubt thou the stars are fire, Doubt that the sun doth move. Doubt truth to be a liar, But never doubt I love.

College isn’t in everyone’s hearts. I am living proof, though, that school doesn’t mess up your plans. It gives you more experiences to write about.

Some people think literature is high culture and that it should only have a small readership. I don’t think so… I have to compete with popular culture, including TV, magazines, movies and video games.

Writing music is just like writing a book.

All books are divisible into two classes, the books of the hour, and the books of all time.

Whatever came to mind, whatever came to hand, I would read.

The thing about fantasy – there are certain things you just don’t do in fantasy.

I was saving the name of ‚Geisel‘ for the Great American Novel.

The book is not really the container for the book. The book itself is the narrative. It’s the thing that people create.

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.

You can’t blame gravity for falling in love.

Writers write to influence their readers, their preachers, their auditors, but always, at bottom, to be more themselves.

I rewrote the ending to ‚Farewell to Arms,‘ the last page of it, thirty-nine times before I was satisfied.

Of course, there are those critics – New York critics as a rule – who say, ‚Well, Maya Angelou has a new book out and of course it’s good but then she’s a natural writer.‘ Those are the ones I want to grab by the throat and wrestle to the floor because it takes me forever to get it to sing. I work at the language.

Mere humans who root through their refrigerators at three o’clock in the morning can only produce writing that matches what they do. And that includes me.

If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.