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.

If you keep on writing for three years, every day, you should be strong. Of course, you have to be strong mentally, also. But in the first place, you have to be strong physically. That is a very important thing. Physically and mentally you have to be strong.

I want to put a ding in the universe.

The intelligence of the creature known as a crowd, is the square root of the number of people in it.

Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the fates.

And the idea of just wandering off to a cafe with a notebook and writing and seeing where that takes me for awhile is just bliss.

Sometimes I write stuff that strangely predicts what’s going to happen in my life.

Working with a guy like Ice Cube on ‚Ride Along,‘ you learn so much. He’s a guy who produces, writes, and directs, so you watch and learn and ask questions. As you go, you learn and figure out what you should and shouldn’t do. I do nothing but soak up information.

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.

If you had a million Shakespeares, could they write like a monkey?

It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.

I have a personal ambition to live my life honestly and honor the true love that I’ve had and also the people I’ve had around me.

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.

I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.

A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.

I was a class clown. At 12, I was definitely clowning. I was making all the jokes. But I was smart, so the teachers didn’t know what to do with me.

The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.

I started out as a poet. I’ve always been a poet since I was 7 or 8. And so I feel myself to be fundamentally a poet who got into writing novels.

I liked to write from the time I was about 12 or 13. I loved to read. And since I only spoke to my brother, I would write down my thoughts. And I think I wrote some of the worst poetry west of the Rockies. But by the time I was in my 20s, I found myself writing little essays and more poetry – writing at writing.

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.

Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort.

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

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

Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious.

The mind of a 19-year-old is very different from the mind of a 26-year-old. You grow. You get into better relationships. You experience more, meet more people, better people. But when you’re in a dark hole at an earlier point in your life – you write about the mindset you’re in at that moment.

Many people, including some conservatives, have been very impressed with how brainy the president and his advisers are. But that is not quite as reassuring as it might seem.

At Sarah Lawrence, I realized that everybody was already what they were going to be. The painters were painting, the writers writing, the dancers dancing. And nobody wore any makeup. The art was uppermost.

When I write, it’s like choosing which shoes I’m going to put on. More often than not, my lyrics are personal – but I sometimes have to put myself in other people’s shoes.

You have to be smart. The easy days are over.

Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.

For a long time, I had the idea that I would do a certain amount of work the best I could, and then I would reach a comfort zone, and I wouldn’t be pushed to write more. I would become a different person. It’s a surprise to me that this hasn’t happened. Your body ages, but your mind is the same.

It has actually been suggested that warfare may have been the principle evolutionary pressure that created the huge gap between the human brain and that of our closest living relatives, the anthropoid apes. Whole groups of hominids with inferior brains could not win wars and were therefore exterminated.

A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.

It is our moral obligation to give every child the very best education possible.

Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. Because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential.

I only type every third night. I have no plan. My mind is a blank. I sit down. The typewriter gives me things I don’t even know I’m working on. It’s a free lunch. A free dinner. I don’t know how long it is going to continue, but so far there is nothing easier than writing.

I didn’t want to be a writer, but I became one. And now I have many readers, in many countries. I think that’s a miracle. So I think I have to be humble regarding this ability. I’m proud of it and I enjoy it, and it is strange to say it this way, but I respect it.

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.

I will carry on writing, to be sure. But I don’t know if I would want to publish again after Harry Potter.

Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about something you do not want to know.

I always wanted to operate at the highest altitude, just in terms of hip-hop and the music.

The most important thing is to read as much as you can, like I did. It will give you an understanding of what makes good writing and it will enlarge your vocabulary.

I came to New York to be a fine artist – that was my ambition.

The best people renounce all for one goal, the eternal fame of mortals; but most people stuff themselves like cattle.

Man is the only animal capable of reasoning, though many others possess the faculty of memory and instruction in common with him.

There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them.

I feel like I was writing as I was learning to talk. Writing was always a go-to form of communication. And I knew I could sing from being in tune with the radio.

In our time political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.

When you are aspiring to the highest place, it is honorable to reach the second or even the third rank.

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.

‚Bellyache‘ is totally fictional. I like writing about things that aren’t real. The song is about not trusting anyone and then putting trust in yourself and realizing that you don’t know what you are doing, either. Or realizing that things you do with a group of people that you think are cool in the moment are ultimately all on you.

Good writing is like a windowpane.

Any man who wants to be president is either an egomaniac or crazy.

You can write a short story in two hours. Two hours a day, you have a novel in a year.

In all my days of schooling, from preschool all the way up to 12th grade, there was not one white person in my class. Literally zero.

A veteran journalist has never had time to think twice before he writes.

It’s with bad sentiments that one makes good novels.

Yet, it is true, poetry is delicious; the best prose is that which is most full of poetry.

Humanity I love you because when you’re hard up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink.

I would love to continue in music, with writing… but I am not the kind of person who will hang around if I start to become irrelevant. If that happens, I will bow down gracefully, raise my kids, and have a garden. And I am going to let my hair go gray when I am older. I don’t need to be blonde when I’m 60!

I never expected to be anybody important.