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.

It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them.

It’s not difficult for me to put my feelings into written form. I try to be concise and to go direct to the subject. This is what people like about my work, and what the critics hate.

I’m not going to get into the ring with Tolstoy.

When you write your first book aged 25 or so, you have 25 years of experience, albeit much of it juvenile experience. The second book comes after an extra year sitting in bookshops. Pretty soon, you begin to run on empty.

I have never entered into any controversy in defense of my philosophical opinions; I leave them to take their chance in the world. If they are right, truth and experience will support them; if wrong, they ought to be refuted and rejected. Disputes are apt to sour one’s temper and disturb one’s quiet.

Someone asked me, if I were stranded on a desert island what book would I bring… ‚How to Build a Boat.‘

If you want to sacrifice the admiration of many men for the criticism of one, go ahead, get married.

Religion can be the enemy of God. It’s often what happens when God, like Elvis, has left the building.

How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.

It is the most sensual men who need to flee women and torment their bodies.

There are certain shades of limelight that can wreck a girl’s complexion.

Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.

A man who says that no patriot should attack the war until it is over… is saying no good son should warn his mother of a cliff until she has fallen.

A true artist is expected to be all that is noble-minded, and this is not altogether a mistake; on the other hand, however, in what a mean way are critics allowed to pounce upon us.

I don’t see myself as beautiful, because I can see a lot of flaws. People have really odd opinions. They tell me I’m skinny, as if that’s supposed to make me happy.

The desire for possession is insatiable, to such a point that it can survive even love itself. To love, therefore, is to sterilize the person one loves.

We all want to be famous people, and the moment we want to be something we are no longer free.

There can be no doubt that the average man blames much more than he praises. His instinct is to blame. If he is satisfied he says nothing; if he is not, he most illogically kicks up a row.

Watch out for the joy-stealers: gossip, criticism, complaining, faultfinding, and a negative, judgmental attitude.

I am sorry to think that you do not get a man’s most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.

I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn’t wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine.

The desire of excessive power caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge caused men to fall.

The one thing that ‚Via Dolorosa‘ has is no opinions. To me, curiosity is 50 times as valuable as opinion.

Right after the assassination of Osama bin Laden, amid all the cheers and applause, there were a few critical comments questioning the legality of the act.

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

The natural desire of good men is knowledge.

Once you publish a book, it is out of your control. You cannot dictate how people read it.

Suppose I criticise Iran. What impact does that have? The only impact it has is in fortifying those who want to carry out policies I don’t agree with, like bombing.

I don’t think it’s a good advert for any restaurant, a fat chef, and secondly, who wants to eat a dessert when the chef’s a fat pig.

Dickens, as you know, never got round to starting his home page.

An author writes a book, and that’s the book at that point. And if the author writes the book again, then somehow something has gone wrong, if you see what I mean.

I don’t care if people I admire criticize me because their opinion is valuable to me.

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.

It behooves every man to remember that the work of the critic is of altogether secondary importance, and that, in the end, progress is accomplished by the man who does things.

I don’t claim to be knowledgeable about theology. Most of my knowledge comes out of my experience and the lessons in the Bible. Every Sunday I’m home I teach 45 minutes and we boiled them down to one page for the new book, ‚Through the Year with Jimmy Carter.‘

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

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.

If you must tell me your opinions, tell me what you believe in. I have plenty of doubts of my own.

Art is parasitic on life, just as criticism is parasitic on art.

Although I’m only fourteen, I know quite well what I want. I know who is right and who is wrong. I have my opinions, my own ideas and principles, and although it may sound pretty mad from an adolescent, I feel more of a person than a child. I feel quite independent of anyone.

It’s certainly not wrong to want to be a better person. God gave us that desire.

I think it’s a myth that American public or any other public is so stupid that they need to be constantly pricked.

I need more sex, OK? Before I die I wanna taste everyone in the world.

‚For Whom the Bell Tolls‘ was a problem which I carried on each day. I knew what was going to happen in principle. But I invented what happened each day I wrote.

People in Latin America… love America from afar and emulate America in some ways but also hate a lot of things that America does to them.

Give a critic an inch, he’ll write a play.

I like definitive things.

An empowered organisation is one in which individuals have the knowledge, skill, desire, and opportunity to personally succeed in a way that leads to collective organisational success.

This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing-room.

The desire of gold is not for gold. It is for the means of freedom and benefit.

Virtue consists, not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it.

Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will.

The fact is I am not having sex. But I feel absolutely ripe for the, what would you say? plucking?

I’m a pretty decent writer. It comes easy to me. I don’t agonize over sentences. I write like I talk. I try to make them good books.

Early on, I was so impressed with Charles Dickens. I grew up in the South, in a little village in Arkansas, and the whites in my town were really mean, and rude. Dickens, I could tell, wouldn’t be a man who would curse me out and talk to me rudely.

An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmaster of ever afterwards.

The key to success is to focus our conscious mind on things we desire not things we fear.

What the Pope thinks of being gay does not matter to the world. It matters to the people who like the Pope and follow the Pope… It is not a reflection of all religious people.

I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its Churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.

When we see a natural style, we are astonished and charmed; for we expected to see an author, and we find a person.