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.

It would be an egregious mistake to ever refer to me in the same breath as most of the people I write about.

Getting a great idea with song writing is a lot like love. You don’t know why this one is different, but it is. You don’t know why this one is better, but it is. It sticks in your head, and you can’t stop thinking about it.

I didn’t have any agenda or plan when I started writing stuff.

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 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.

What’s the greater risk? Letting go of what people think – or letting go of how I feel, what I believe, and who I am?

It’s very fun to be the hunter of the sounds. The hunter of the right energy. And it’s not really about if every sound is correct; it’s more the energy – if it hits you in some way, it doesn’t really matter to me if it’s not perfect. I’m still very excited while hunting for songs.

Music will never go away, and I will never stop making music; it’s just what capacity or what arena you decide to do it.

I cannot with any real integrity perform songs I’ve done for 25 years. I don’t need the money. What I need is to feel that I am not letting myself down as an artist and that I still have something to contribute.

It seems like when I was growing up there was more compromise, wanting to work with each other, and I think all of them – all of the lawmakers – have hearts to do what’s right, and they all are passionate about it.

Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.

I think I write in a fairly self-confident manner.

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

Money is an unavoidable consequence, but it isn’t the reason I write; if it was, I wouldn’t have written any of the YA books, because advances in that field are small compared to what I’d got now for an ‚adult‘ DW.

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.

I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good.

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

I write for myself things that I’ve gone through.

Whatever the reviewers feel about ‚The Casual Vacancy‘, it is what I wanted it to be, and you can’t say fairer than that as a writer.

My own books drive themselves. I know roughly where a book is going to end, but essentially the story develops under my fingers. It’s just a matter of joining the dots.

I don’t believe in personal immortality; the only way I expect to have some version of such a thing is through my books.

I’ve never had writer’s block.

I might just write a novel next. I don’t know!

I don’t know how many good books I still have in me; I hope there are another four or five.

I think if I keep working in the way that I am, from the heart and from passion and with love, well, the fruits of that will keep coming.

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

I’m not trying to be sexy. It’s just my way of expressing myself when I move around.

I notice that my characters go out to dinner and have fun and take these great trips, but I spend so much time on their lives, I don’t have much of a personal life of my own. I have to sort of remember to fill out that little notebook on me.

The expression a woman wears on her face is far more important than the clothes she wears on her back.

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.

I’ve been lucky – all the ads I’ve got, I’ve got to be myself. I haven’t had to act too much or tried too hard to be someone I’m not. I think that’s why people sort of like them. Even the Fastrack ads I did with Genelia.

We should play free football, defend lively with a passion, and have the best understanding in offence.

The more nobly a man wills and acts, the more avid he becomes for great and sublime aims to pursue. He will no longer be content with family, country, and the remunerative aspect of his work. He will want wider organisations to create, new paths to blaze, causes to uphold, truths to discover, an ideal to cherish and defend.

I’ve always done whatever I want and always been exactly who I am.

To take a few nouns, and a few pronouns, and adverbs and adjectives, and put them together, ball them up, and throw them against the wall to make them bounce. That’s what Norman Mailer did. That’s what James Baldwin did, and Joan Didion did, and that’s what I do – that’s what I mean to do.

You can stroke people with words.

There may be a great fire in our hearts, yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke.

It’s important to love in hip hop.

I have certain signatures, certain cutting principles. It could be a raw-edged seam; it could be leaving the lining of sheepskin exposed so it’s not perfectly finished. I invent new ways to do it, but the end goal is always the same.

I don’t live for the accolades. I’m more so about the music. Making it, and putting it out. Those are the two best feelings.

I’m sticking to the script, I’m putting that organic feeling back in the game.

I don’t think of myself as an artist. I’m just a guy who can write.

Writing bores me so.

Anything that encourages people to pick up an instrument and play, I’m fully behind.

I don’t believe you could be a 39-year-old quarterback in the NFL and eat cheeseburgers every day. I want to be able to do what I love to do for a long time.

True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.

Many people mistake our work for our vocation. Our vocation is the love of Jesus.

I don’t profess to have music as my big wheel and there are a number of other things as important to me apart from music. Theatre and mime, for instance.

I just have a thing in my brain that when I’m about to do something that’s genuine or authentic, I think of it in song form. I’ll be like, ‚Yo, this is a human emotion that no one talks about.‘

Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth.

I really love training and being in good shape, and it’s so much a part of my life now, so it never really feels like work to me.

My priority is my books, at least at this point. What I have to do is write the narrative of this time.

Although I’ve been living in the British Virgin Islands for some time now, I have never stopped caring passionately about the U.K. and its great people.

See, ‚A Time to Kill‘ was the one I got famous off of. Big ka-boom, over one weekend. After that, I did films that I really wanted to do.

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

I’m never gonna step away from stand-up. I can’t. That’s what got me where I am, and that’s also my muse. That’s how I stay level-headed. That’s what keeps me going.

The things that transfixed you as a child, that you found most exciting was not a passing fancy, but a message about what you’re supposed to do.

Writing and cookery are just two different means of communication.

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.

If you’re too big to fit into fashion, then you just have to do your own fashion.