I had this dream to become a writer since I was a teenager.

My favorite thing in life is writing about life, specifically the parts of life concerning love. Because, as far as I’m concerned, love is absolutely everything.

Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it.

Ambition has one heel nailed in well, though she stretch her fingers to touch the heavens.

I’ve had quite a lot of luck with dreams. I’ve often awoken in the night with a phrase or even a whole song in my head.

Writing is like anything else – the more you do it, the better you get at it, the easier it comes, and the less concerned you’ll be about what’s going to happen to it, where it’s going, what it sounds like, whether it’s right.

When a person starts to talk about their dreams, it’s as if something bubbles up from within. Their eyes brighten, their face glows, and you can feel the excitement in their words.

I don’t like to write like God. It is only because you never do it, though, that the critics think you can’t do it.

The moment I said I’d finished a book, I knew what would happen. There would be a bidding war, and I would end up with someone who’d got the fattest wallet, who had bought it because I’d written Harry Potter. That would have been why.

If the writing is honest it cannot be separated from the man who wrote it.

No, there is literally nothing on the business side that I wouldn’t sacrifice in a heartbeat to have an extra couple of hours‘ writing. Nothing.

My experience of malaria was just taking anti-malarials, which give you strange dreams, because I don’t want to get malaria.

Naturally, my stories are about women – I’m a woman. I don’t know what the term is for men who write mostly about men. I’m not always sure what is meant by ‚feminist.‘ In the beginning, I used to say, ‚Well, of course I’m a feminist.‘ But if it means that I follow a kind of feminist theory, or know anything about it, then I’m not.

I don’t think about who the audience is for my books.

Every artist wants something different out the game.

I spent much of my childhood in northern Quebec, and often there was no radio, no television – there wasn’t a lot to entertain us. When it rained, I stayed inside reading, writing, drawing.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.

In all seriousness, people think that it’s the ideas that are important. Well, everyone has ideas, all the time. I tend to write mine down and remember them, but at some point you have to apply the bum to the seat and knock out about sixty five thousand words – that’s how long a novel is.

When I first stopped going to high school, I was about 15, 16. It had to be, like, 2000, 2001.

There’s no such thing as perfect writing, just like there’s no such thing as perfect despair.

I really hope someday in Hollywood, some producer or director will hire me only to do drama.

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.

When I do have free time, I spend it with friends, or I spend it at home writing or making something.

One aspect of appellate judging is we have to give reasons for all of our decisions. And when you sit down and try to write it out, sometimes you find that your first judgment wasn’t the right one.

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.

If a small-town boy like me who bagged groceries was able to make his dreams come true, you can too.

Positional leaders ignore the fact that every person has hopes, dreams, desires, and goals of his own. And leaders must bring their vision and the aspirations of the people they lead together in a way that benefits everyone.

One day, I want to make a PG film.

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.

‚The Lion‘ all began with a picture of a faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood. This picture had been in my mind since I was about sixteen. Then one day, when I was about forty, I said to myself, ‚Let’s try to make a story about it.‘

The joy and love that I get from playing football are unbelievable. It is such a feeling that I want to give everything that I have got. I just enjoy it, I am living a life that I never even dreamt of.

My drive is other people’s success.

I’ve been writing my entire life, and I’ll always write.

I wanted to write when I was young, but people said it was impossible. Then my parents locked me in a mental institution – they said I was crazy and would never make a living from writing.

When I write, I tend to twist my hair. Something for my small mind to do, I guess.

Stories surge up out of nowhere, and if they feel compelling, you follow them. You let them unfold inside you and see where they are going to lead.

I cannot claim to have had a hard time publishing.

One has to secrete a jelly in which to slip quotations down people’s throats – and one always secretes too much jelly.

I notice that young men go to the universities in order to become doctors or philosophers or anything, so long as it is a title, and that many go in for those professions who are utterly unfit for them, while others who would be very competent are prevented by business or their daily cares, which keep them away from letters.

Your feelings so are important to write down, to capture, and to remember because today you’re heartbroken, but tomorrow you’ll be in love again.

Reduce your plan to writing. The moment you complete this, you will have definitely given concrete form to the intangible desire.

I started writing as a child. But I didn’t think of myself actually writing until I was in college. And I had gone to Africa as a sophomore or something – no, maybe junior – and wrote a book of poems. And that was my beginning. I published that book.

‚The New Yorker‘ was really my first experience with serious editing. Previously, I’d more or less just had copyediting with a few suggestions – not much.

‚Nation‘ was one that I’d have killed myself if I hadn’t written it. It was absolutely important to me that I wrote it. It was good for my soul.

Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes the pressure off the second.

When I was a little girl, I always dreamed of being a star. I didn’t really know what all that meant. I didn’t know.

Those who have been writing literature have not been writing life.

Joining McLaren didn’t add a lot of pressure but of course you want to make sure you can impress them.

I was a grade B housewife, maybe a B minus. But when I got time to write, I would be unable to finish a sentence. I had anxiety attacks. Partly it was a way of personifying the situation because I couldn’t breathe. I was surrounded by people and by duties. I was a housewife and the children’s mother, and I was judged on how I performed those roles.

I was in a queer mood, thinking myself very old: but now I am a woman again – as I always am when I write.

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 a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.

Once writing has become your major vice and greatest pleasure, only death can stop it.

That’s something that is almost accidental at the beginning of a career, but the more you write, the more trained you are to recognize the little signals.

So that’s the dissenter’s hope: that they are writing not for today but for tomorrow.

I just do the best I can and write something interesting, to tell stories in an interesting way and move forward from there.

I never thought about what people would say about me. I was just a young guy who was excited to become a comedian and an actor, and I just wanted to get to do what I got to do.

I never wanted to be the next Bruce Lee. I just wanted to be the first Jackie Chan.

I like playing for the purple and gold. This is where I want to finish up.

You know those things that you throw the twigs into and it spits them out? That’s what I do. The branches are like life, and I throw them into my head and some of it comes out as humor.

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!