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?

It’s pretty intense writing about my own life, my own struggles.

I am the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries.

A boy’s story is the best that is ever told.

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

A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.

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

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

I like writing. I get cranky when I can’t. Yes, I write books back to back, and I work very hard on them.

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

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

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.

All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.

I don’t understand what it’s all about or what’s worth what, but if the people in the Swedish Academy decide that x, y or z wins the Nobel Prize, then so be it.

I think writing really helps you heal yourself. I think if you write long enough, you will be a healthy person. That is, if you write what you need to write, as opposed to what will make money, or what will make fame.

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

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

Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.

My wife and I love each other very much.

I always tell audiences when I talk about writing: Writing isn’t something I do; writing is something that I am. I am writing – it’s just an expression of me.

I don’t think about who the audience is for my books.

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.

I write screenplays in the middle of the night.

When I write, I try to become different characters.

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

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.

It was very lucky for me as a writer that I studied the physical sciences rather than English. I wrote for my own amusement. There was no kindly English professor to tell me for my own good how awful my writing really was. And there was no professor with the power to order me what to read, either.

Early on, I was so impressed with Charles Dickens. I grew up in the South, in a little village in Arkansas, and the whites in my town were really mean, and rude. Dickens, I could tell, wouldn’t be a man who would curse me out and talk to me rudely.

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.

The best scientist is open to experience and begins with romance – the idea that anything is possible.

The kind of fiction I’m trying to write is about telling the truth.

A fortunate author can write maybe twelve novels in his lifetime.

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

A lot of the time when I write about the person that I love, I feel like I’m writing about New York.

He that composes himself is wiser than he that composes a book.

Writing’s just as natural to me as getting up and cooking breakfast.

It’s not easy to define poetry.

I’ve never had writer’s block.

The first real thought that I had of something that I might do was to write for car magazines, because I always had a car thing.

Love is the only game that is not called on account of darkness.

If I haven’t any talent for writing books or newspaper articles, well, then I can always write for myself.

Becoming a writer is not a ‚career decision‘ like becoming a doctor or a policeman. You don’t choose it so much as get chosen, and once you accept the fact that you’re not fit for anything else, you have to be prepared to walk a long, hard road for the rest of your days.

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

In many ways, I’ve been writing personal stories all my life.

‚The New Yorker‘ was really my first experience with serious editing. Previously, I’d more or less just had copyediting with a few suggestions – not much.

Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will.

The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.

I’ve tried to reduce profanity but I reduced so much profanity when writing the book that I’m afraid not much could come out. Perhaps we will have to consider it simply as a profane book and hope that the next book will be less profane or perhaps more sacred.

I think I belong to America’s last generation of novelists. Novelists will come one by one from now on, not in seeming families, and will perhaps write only one or two novels, and let it go at that.

I wrote an article on a new Porsche for ‚Automobile Magazine.‘ I knew the editor, and she asked me to write this article. So I’m more proud of that than anything.

All fiction is about people, unless it’s about rabbits pretending to be people. It’s all essentially characters in action, which means characters moving through time and changes taking place, and that’s what we call ‚the plot‘.

‚Mystic River‘ just smelled interesting to me. So I read it and liked it right away. Even the dialogue in it was great.

The proper study of mankind is books.

I don’t have to ‚freedom-kiss‘ my wife when what I really want to do is French-kiss her.

I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk.

Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial ‚we.‘

Stories surge up out of nowhere, and if they feel compelling, you follow them. You let them unfold inside you and see where they are going to lead.

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

Doing graphic novels is cool! It’s fun! You get to write something, and then see it visually page by page, panel by panel, working with the artist, you get to see it fleshed out.

I am an anarchist in politics and an impressionist in art as well as a symbolist in literature. Not that I understand what these terms mean, but I take them to be all merely synonyms of pessimist.

Religion is part of the human make-up. It’s also part of our cultural and intellectual history. Religion was our first attempt at literature, the texts, our first attempt at cosmology, making sense of where we are in the universe, our first attempt at health care, believing in faith healing, our first attempt at philosophy.