I have owed you this letter for a very long time-but my fingers have avoided the pencil as though it were an old and poisoned tool.

Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner’s inquest.

Communications technology changes possibilities for communication, but that doesn’t mean it changes the inherited structure of the brain. So you may think that you’re addicted to online reading, but as soon as it isn’t available anymore, your brain will pretty immediately adjust to other forms of reading. It’s a habit like all habits.

Always make those above you feel comfortably superior. In your desire to please or impress them, do not go too far in displaying your talents or you might accomplish the opposite – inspire fear and insecurity.

To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.

I don’t like typing messages on my phone. Some people get used to it.

There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.

There is plenty of building material and more than enough manpower to make a decent home for every Cuban. But if we continue to wait for the golden calf, a thousand years will have gone by, and the problem will remain the same.

The writing is important, but the way you say the line and the pause you give it, the facial expression – all of that is very important.

To be clear: we have fights and problems like any other couple.

I ain’t never far away from a pencil and paper or a tape recorder.

Not to expose your true feelings to an adult seems to be instinctive from the age of seven or eight onwards.

Writing bores me so.

When all is said and done, more is said than done.

Humans cannot avoid trying to influence others. Everything we say or do is examined and interpreted by others for clues as to our intentions.

To a guy like me, a laugh is full of information.

All knowledge which ends in words will die as quickly as it came to life, with the exception of the written word: which is its mechanical part.

I like writing. I get cranky when I can’t. Yes, I write books back to back, and I work very hard on them.

Where there is shouting, there is no true knowledge.

Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.

And as a writer, one of the things that I’ve always been interested in doing is actually invading your comfort space. Because that’s what we’re supposed to do. Get under your skin, and make you react.

I always keep my guard up with guys and I guess that can get in the way sometimes. I can make them go through hell.

Never regret what you don’t write.

I write from my soul. This is the reason that critics don’t hurt me, because it is me. If it was not me, if I was pretending to be someone else, then this could unbalance my world, but I know who I am.

Writing is fun – at least mostly. I write for four hours every day. After that I go running. As a rule, 10 kilometers (6.2 miles). That’s easy to manage.

One often contradicts an opinion when what is uncongenial is really the tone in which it was conveyed.

Someone told me that each equation I included in the book would halve the sales.

I’ve read a lot of really great characters in some really crappy stories, where I said, like, ‚Boy I could shine here, but the story sucks.‘ I don’t want to be part of that.

It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

The major advances in speed of communication and ability to interact took place more than a century ago. The shift from sailing ships to telegraph was far more radical than that from telephone to email!

My readers – and I get 400 emails for a day, my readers normally they say, well, you understand me, and I answer, you do understand me also. We are in the same level.

There are some who speak well and write badly. For the place and the audience warm them, and draw from their minds more than they think of without that warmth.

Each day we understand better what the Indians say, and they us, so that very often we are intelligible to each other.

The way I talk is bizarre.

Any fact that needs to be disclosed should be put out now or as quickly as possible, because otherwise the bleeding will not end.

People who have time on their hands will inevitably waste the time of people who have work to do.

I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.

I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.

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.‘

I’ve written some great things. That’s a gift, but there’s consequences. Yeah, you get this great work, but you suffer. You really, really suffer.

A poet never takes notes. You never take notes in a love affair.

On TV the people can see it. On radio you’ve got to create it.

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.

You always have to remember that if you say something negative, it’s going to come back to haunt you.

Never find fault with the absent.

The common thread for everything I do is this idea of a Web-services architecture. What does that mean? It means taking components of software and systems and having them be self-describing, so that you can aim them, ask them what their capabilities are, and communicate with them using a standard protocol.

Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to trust your team. It’s a lesson I’ve had to relearn quite a few times.

I very much believe the Internet is indeed all it is cracked up to be.

The most dangerous word in any human tongue is the word for brother. It’s inflammatory.

I write because writing is something that I have to do. And it doesn’t matter whether people like it or not. When I write, I feel the pressure and anxiety that come with taking an empty piece of paper and trying to fill it with something from your own consciousness.

Well I have a microphone and you don’t so you will listen to every damn word I have to say!

You could imagine a language exactly like English except it doesn’t have connectives like ‚and‘ that allow you to make longer expressions. An infant learning truncated English would have no idea about this: They would just pick it up as they would standard English.

I think humans are just hard-wired to process people’s faces and understand meaning and expression at such a more granular level than other types of communication.

It is a fact often observed, that men have written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write well under other circumstances.

Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.

If you can’t move and talk to people that you see, it’s not really my scene.

Do not tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don’t tell them where they know the fish.

There is one way to have a short but exciting conversation with me, and that is to move too slow.

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

What I have never been afraid of is to be a little silly, and you can engage people that way. My view is, first you get them to laugh, then you get them to listen.

When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes on a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlightenment and comfort at top speed.