Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn’t matter. I’m not sure a bad person can write a good book, If art doesn’t make us better, then what on earth is it for.

To create something you must be something.

I just want people to be the best thems and live the happiest lives possible.

Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.

Transforming yourself into a deep listener will not only prove more amusing as you open your mind to their mind, but you will gain the most invaluable lessons about human psychology.

The X is an amazing car, but we kind of got carried away with the art and technology. Obviously, you want great art. You want great technology. But we did get a little distracted from our mission, which was to advance the cause of electric vehicles. And it probably delayed us a little bit with the Model 3 as well.

Your timeless self does not age and has no fear of the future. Contemplate your physical self and all its possessions, and practice laughing peacefully at it all.

God wants you to be a winner, not a whiner.

You can’t build a plot out of jokes. You need tragic relief. And you need to let people know that when a lot of frightened people are running around with edged weaponry, there are deaths. Stupid deaths, usually. I’m not writing ‚The A-Team‘ – if there’s a fight going on, people will get hurt. Not letting this happen would be a betrayal.

I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self.

We have listened too long to the courtly Muses of Europe.

Without a moral framework, there is nothing left but immediate self-indulgence by some and the path of least resistance by others. Neither can sustain a free society.

If you do not conquer self, you will be conquered by self.

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

Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind.

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.

Our Creator expects His children everywhere to educate themselves.

Even as you make progress, you need the discipline to keep from backtracking and sabotaging the success as it’s happening.

Good writing is like a windowpane.

Lena Waithe won an Emmy for writing while starring on the Netflix show ‚Master of None,‘ but it might be more accurate to call her a Master of Everything.

It is healthier, in any case, to write for the adults one’s children will become than for the children one’s ‚mature‘ critics often are.

Never confuse motion with action.

Writing and cafes are strongly linked in my brain.

I am never satisfied with myself and that is what keeps me going – I have no post-satisfaction.

I don’t want to be something that just comes and goes.

Don’t get older just to get wiser. If you get older, you will be wiser, I believe that – if you dare. But get older because it’s fun!

You can write any time people will leave you alone and not interrupt you. Or, rather, you can if you will be ruthless enough about it. But the best writing is certainly when you are in love.

Remember, always give your best. Never get discouraged. Never be petty. Always remember, others may hate you. But those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.

When art dresses in worn-out material it is most easily recognized as art.

Don’t just read the easy stuff. You may be entertained by it, but you will never grow from it.

Courage is like love; it must have hope for nourishment.

No one should be ashamed to admit he is wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.

Man can alter his life by altering his thinking.

If I could write directly on a typewriter or a computer, I would do it. But keyboards have always intimidated me. I’ve never been able to think clearly with my fingers in that position. A pen is a much more primitive instrument. You feel that the words are coming out of your body and then you dig the words into the page.

Your net worth to the world is usually determined by what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good ones.

I’ll never tell a lie. I’ll never make a misleading statement. I’ll never betray the confidence that any of you had in me. And I’ll never avoid a controversial issue.

Is there anyone so wise as to learn by the experience of others?

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.

It takes half your life before you discover life is a do-it-yourself project.

Understand this law and you will then know, beyond room for the slightest doubt, that you are constantly punishing yourself for every wrong you commit and rewarding yourself for every act of constructive conduct in which you indulge.

The earliest paintings I loved were always the most non-referential paintings you can imagine, by painters such as Mondrian. I was thrilled by them because they didn’t refer to anything else. They stood alone, and they were just charged magic objects that did not get their strength from being connected to anything else.

Correcting bad habits cannot be done by forbidding or punishment.

I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it.

They say it is the first step that costs the effort. I do not find it so. I am sure I could write unlimited ‚first chapters‘. I have indeed written many.

We just seem to have lost all our morals and principles and values these days.

It is in self-limitation that a master first shows himself.

What’s dangerous is not to evolve.

Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.

While we look to the dramatist to give romance to realism, we ask of the actor to give realism to romance.

Students achieving Oneness will move on to Twoness.

There are no second acts in American lives.

It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.

The atmosphere of orthodoxy is always damaging to prose, and above all it is completely ruinous to the novel, the most anarchical of all forms of literature.

Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves.

I’m just writing, writing, writing. I keep these tablets on me until I’m inspired to go back in and make the music. I never take a break from my pen, because I pride myself on that.

I never called my work an ‚art‘. It’s part of show business, the business of building entertainment.

If you’re not producing as much as you consume, or perhaps a little more, then clearly we cannot use the big organization of our society for the purpose of keeping you alive, because your life does not benefit us, and it can’t be of very much use to yourself.

Power over others is weakness disguised as strength.

The best thing I did was to choose the right heroes.

Modesty is the color of virtue.

We spend our lives, all of us, waiting for the great day, the great battle, or the deed of power. But that external consummation is not given to many: nor is it necessary. So long as our being is tensed, directed with passion, towards that which is the spirit of all things, then that spirit will emerge from our own hidden, nameless effort.