I am 55 years old now. It takes three years to write one book. I don’t know how many books I will be able to write before I die. It is like a countdown. So with each book I am praying – please let me live until I am finished.

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

I never expected any sort of success with ‚Mockingbird’… I sort of hoped someone would like it enough to give me encouragement.

Knowledge about life is one thing; effective occupation of a place in life, with its dynamic currents passing through your being, is another.

Your life is like a play with several acts. Some of the characters who enter have short roles to play, others, much larger. Some are villains and others are good guys. But all of them are necessary; otherwise, they wouldn’t be in the play. Embrace them all, and move on to the next act.

The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?

Nine-tenths of the existing books are nonsense and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense.

So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change. This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre. All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant.

The thing is, ‚Discworld‘ had been going on for a very long time, and I’ve written children’s books as well. Usually when people have a really big series they franchise it, which I thought is a bit of a no-no, so I thought what I’d do is I’d franchise it to myself.

Ageing’s alright, better than the alternative, which is not being here.

I soothe my conscience now with the thought that it is better for hard words to be on paper than that Mummy should carry them in her heart.

It’s impossible to live a life totally free of feelings. God created all of us to be emotional creatures, and feelings are a big part of our lives.

People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them I have the heart of a small boy… and I keep it in a jar on my desk.

Glory be and praise to God. I didn’t do any of this. God did. I don’t have a recipe or a blueprint. I prayed for it, and my prayers are continuing to be answered.

Satire lies about literary men while they live and eulogy lies about them when they die.

Lord, help my poor soul.

I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.

I don’t think I’d ever make an album of just covers because I love writing my own music.

We are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep.

True prayer is neither a mere mental exercise nor a vocal performance. It is far deeper than that – it is spiritual transaction with the Creator of Heaven and Earth.

The only length of life that seems to satisfy the longings of the human heart is life everlasting.

I could have been a cult writer if I’d kept writing surrealistic novels. But I wanted to break into the mainstream, so I had to prove that I could write a realistic book.

Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.

You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might also pray in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance.

The answer to all writing, to any career for that matter, is love.

We conceal it from ourselves in vain – we must always love something. In those matters seemingly removed from love, the feeling is secretly to be found, and man cannot possibly live for a moment without it.

A word is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day.

I’m more of a realist when it comes to life, and I’d much rather my mother be in a spiritual place in Heaven than in a bed, sick, fighting for her life.

I don’t care about age. Nor do I care about those who do not accept the science. I don’t have as much experience, and therefore I listen more. But I also have the right to express my opinion, no matter my age.

Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.

I feel like I’m too busy writing history to read it.

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

We are motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is the more he is inspired by glory. The very philosophers themselves, even in those books which they write in contempt of glory, inscribe their names.

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

You can’t get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me.

What is the use of writing plays, what is the use of writing anything, if there is not a will which finally moulds chaos itself into a race of gods.

I have always reckoned the dignity of the republic of first importance and preferable to life.

Death and life have their determined appointments; riches and honors depend upon heaven.

Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.

I pray while driving. I pray while working, and while relaxing.

I don’t have this feeling that 70 is really old.

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

Of course, there are those critics – New York critics as a rule – who say, ‚Well, Maya Angelou has a new book out and of course it’s good but then she’s a natural writer.‘ Those are the ones I want to grab by the throat and wrestle to the floor because it takes me forever to get it to sing. I work at the language.

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

May you live your life as if the maxim of your actions were to become universal law.

When I say that basically writing is a hard hustle, I don’t mean that it is a bad life, if one can get away with it. It’s the miracle of miracles to make a living by the typer.

Prayer is simply a two-way conversation between you and God.

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

I’ve never wanted to use my age as a gimmick, as something that would get me ahead of other people. I’ve wanted the music to do that.

To a profound pessimist about life, being in danger is not depressing.

I joyfully hasten to meet death. If it come before I have had opportunity to develop all my artistic faculties, it will come, my hard fate notwithstanding, too soon, and I should probably wish it later – yet even then I shall be happy, for will it not deliver me from a state of endless suffering?

I have zero desire, just so you know, to be in the limelight. I don’t think it’s good for the country to have a former president criticize his successor. You’re not going to see me giving my opinions in the public arena, until I start selling my book. I’m going to emerge then submerge.

All that I know about my life, it seems, I have learned in books.

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

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

It is a common saying, and in everybody’s mouth, that life is but a sojourn.

For me, I used to be shy towards journalism because it wasn’t poetry. And then I realized that the events that I covered in essays that became journalism were actually great because they inspired me, and they became my muse.

Growing old has been the greatest surprise of my life.

The major value in life is not what you get. The major value in life is what you become.

I think that a man should not live beyond the age when he begins to deteriorate, when the flame that lighted the brightest moment of his life has weakened.

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.