History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

And were an epitaph to be my story I’d have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.

When I was growing up, there was nobody in my family – not even my mother – who I could look to and be like, ‚I know you’ve never said anything homophobic.‘ So, you know, you worry about people in the business who you’ve heard talk that way. Some of my heroes coming up talk recklessly like that.

Wherever you write is supposed to be a little bit of a refuge, a place where you can get away from the world. The more closed in you are, the more you’re forced back on your own imagination.

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.

The existing world economic order constitutes a system of plundering and exploitation like no other in history. Thus, the peoples believe less and less in statements and promises.

One of the greatest lessons of my own life was learning to turn the inner rampage of hatred and anger toward my own father for his reprehensible behavior and abandonment of his family into an inner reaction more closely aligned with God and God-realized love.

Where does discontent start? You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved, but your yearning wanders in new fields. And to prod all these there’s time, the Bastard Time.

In a universe that’s an intelligent system with a divine creative force supporting it, there simply can be no accidents. As tough as it is to acknowledge, you had to go through what you went through in order to get to where you are today, and the evidence is that you did.

Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.

You want to be a writer? Start writing. You want to be a filmmaker? Start shooting stuff on your phone right now.

Men take only their needs into consideration – never their abilities.

We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former times tells us.

If you listen through the screen of your desires, then you obviously listen to your own voice; you are listening to your own desires.

Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are awake, intentionally. So I get up early in the morning, 4 o’clock, and I sit at my desk and what I do is just dream. After three or four hours, that’s enough. In the afternoon, I run. The next day, the dream will continue.

When I write a book, I write a book for myself; the reaction is up to the reader. It’s not my business whether people like or dislike it.

Oceania was at war with Eurasia; therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.

Those parts of history that would undermine the vision of the Left – which prevails in our education system from elementary school to postgraduate study – are not likely to get much attention.

Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators.

There are phases in life which surface at times, and it makes you understand that despite you working hard, everything what you are doing is probably not enough. That’s when you need to look around, and beyond.

In the egoic state, your sense of self, your identity, is derived from your thinking mind – in other words, what your mind tells you about yourself: the storyline of you, the memories, the expectations, all the thoughts that go through your head continuously and the emotions that reflect those thoughts. All those things make up your sense of self.

I don’t have all the answers.

I seem to turn out stories that violate the discipline of the short story form and don’t obey the rules of progression for novels. I don’t think about a particular form: I think more about fiction, let’s say a chunk of fiction.

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.

Nixon was no more a saint than he was a great president.

A man should always consider how much he has more than he wants.

I loved writing for kids, I loved talking to children about what I’d written, I don’t want to leave that behind.

I am never going to have anything more to do with politics or politicians. When this war is over I shall confine myself entirely to writing and painting.

Nothing can be by itself alone, no one can be by himself or herself alone, everyone has to inter-be with every one else. That is why, when you look outside, around you, you can see yourself.

Know thyself? If I knew myself I would run away.

The entering class I joined in 1956 included just nine women, up from five in the then second-year class, and only one African American. All professors, in those now-ancient days, were of the same race and sex.

In this big ball of people, I’m just one grain of sand on this beach.

Our lives are a sum total of the choices we have made.

You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.

Instead of blaming everyone and everything else for your problems, pray for God to help you take an inventory of what’s been on your mind so you can think about what you’ve been thinking about.

When I stop working the rest of the day is posthumous. I’m only really alive when I’m writing.

I think really, China, Chinese, I think they really have a long history of civilization, rich culture.

You’re not going to make Hemingway better by adding animations.

Thought must be divided against itself before it can come to any knowledge of itself.

Many years ago, I concluded that a few hair shirts were part of the mental wardrobe of every man. The president differs from other men in that he has a more extensive wardrobe.

Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy.

The Army will take its lessons learned. They’re excellent at looking into themselves and reflecting on what did we do right, what did we do wrong.

Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.

Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.

I wrote some of the worst poetry west from the Mississippi River, but I wrote. And I finally sometimes got it right.

The finite is annihilated in the presence of the infinite, and becomes a pure nothing. So our spirit before God, so our justice before divine justice.

One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.

A good day is one where I can not just read a book, but write a review of it. Maybe today I’ll be able to do that. I get for some reason somewhat stronger when the sun starts to go down. Dusk is a good time for me. I’m crepuscular.

The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.

Some of our earliest writing, in cuneiform, was about who owes what.

I fear that many a man’s good resolutions only need the ordinary fire of daily life to make them melt away. So, too, with fine professions and the boastings of perfection which abound in this age of shams.

For me, writing has always come out of living a fairly to-the-bone kind of life, just really being present to a lot of life. The writing has been really a byproduct of that.

The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.

I was brought up to try to see what was wrong and right it. Since I am a writer, writing is how I right it.

History shows that the majority of people that have done anything great have passed their youth in seclusion.

When I did have some success, it further emboldens you to be like, ‚No, I’m just going to write what I feel I should write.‘

The first thing which I can record concerning myself is, that I was born. These are wonderful words. This life, to which neither time nor eternity can bring diminution – this everlasting living soul, began. My mind loses itself in these depths.

I had my jazz club and I had enough money. So I didn’t have to write for my living.

I’m not this horrible, evil person.

Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy – which many believe goes hand in hand with it – will be dead as well.

I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly.