I kept writing not because I felt I was so good, but because I felt they were so bad, including Shakespeare, all those. The stilted formalism, like chewing cardboard.

Someone told me something that stuck with me: ‚You have to envision your life, and then go backwards.‘ I’ve been living by that motto for a while, so I see where I need to be. Now I’m just backtracking and trying to get back up there.

I’m writing an unauthorized autobiography.

When I have an idea, I turn down the flame, as if it were a little alcohol stove, as low as it will go. Then it explodes and that is my idea.

Everyone, no doubt, remains first and foremost a man of his own country and continues to draw from it his motive force.

I know a lot of artists say this, but it’s hard to put myself in a box. I just write songs that I strongly believe in and that are coming form a special place. There’s no tricks.

The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, familiar things new.

I’m not very ambitious at all.

To those of you who received honours, awards and distinctions, I say well done. And to the C students, I say you, too, can be president of the United States.

I keep working because I learn something new all the time.

Ambition never is in a greater hurry than I; it merely keeps pace with circumstances and with my general way of thinking.

I am never going to have anything more to do with politics or politicians. When this war is over I shall confine myself entirely to writing and painting.

Action expresses priorities.

The good thing about having chemistry is, when you get to the improv section of a scene, you’ve got somebody to feed off. It can go on and on and on, and the sky’s the limit.

We live in a culture that relishes tearing others down. It’s ultimately more fulfilling, though, to help people reach their goals. Instead of feeling jealous, remember: If God did it for them, He can do it for you.

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

The book is not really the container for the book. The book itself is the narrative. It’s the thing that people create.

An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching.

Ambition has become a dirty word, and I believe it is a great evolutionary force for the positive. If people fail or go astray in their ambition I can live with it but not with people lowering their expectations, wasting time, slacking off and glorifying failure and stupidity.

I’ve been writing poems since I was in the Navy – to Rosalynn. I found I could say things in poems that I never could in prose. Deeper, more personal things. I could write a poem about my mother that I could never tell my mother. Or feelings about being on a submarine that I would have been too embarrassed to share with fellow submariners.

Nothing is more fearful than imagination without taste.

As a novelist, you could say that I am dreaming while I am awake, and every day I can continue with yesterday’s dream. Because it is a dream, there are so many contradictions and I have to adjust them to make the story work. But, in principle, the original dream does not change.

It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.

I think it’s quite great to set yourself a big challenge, and then you’ve got another reason for keeping fit.

Know what you want to do, hold the thought firmly, and do every day what should be done, and every sunset will see you that much nearer to your goal.

The thing that makes my clothes really different is that, number one, they are really great designs; they’re not tacky; they are very professional; the design is made from lots of decisions.

No one has a greater asset for his business than a man’s pride in his work.

A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.

Whenever I write a novel, music just sort of naturally slips in (much like cats do, I suppose).

All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.

We must use time creatively.

Imagine for yourself a character, a model personality, whose example you determine to follow, in private as well as in public.

People aren’t supposed to look back. I’m certainly not going to do it anymore.

If I can put one touch of rosy sunset into the life of any man or woman, I shall feel that I have worked with God.

Make yourself necessary to somebody.

I knew I wasn’t going to be a rocket scientist – let’s not be fools – but I wasn’t going to be a bum.

Don’t be dependent. At all. Ever. Period.

A poet can survive everything but a misprint.

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.

I think, because I started Virgin when I was a teenager, it has become a part of me, like my family, and I am motivated by ambition for it, almost as if it were a child.

I knew from the age of 16 that I wanted to be a writer because I just didn’t think I could do anything else. So I read and read and wrote short stories and dreamed of escape.

What keeps me motivated is love and passion.

I will be conquered; I will not capitulate.

Think off-center.

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.

I think it’s healthy for a person to be nervous. It means you care – that you work hard and want to give a great performance. You just have to channel that nervous energy into the show.

Before I do anything, I think, well what hasn’t been seen. Sometimes, that turns out to be something ghastly and not fit for society. And sometimes that inspiration becomes something that’s really worthwhile.

The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.

Nothing is stopping me from doing what I love to do.

All my pictures are built around the idea of getting in trouble and so giving me the chance to be desperately serious in my attempt to appear as a normal little gentleman.

I was not encouraged to follow the career of a writer because my parents thought that I was going to starve to death. They thought nobody can make a living from being a writer in Brazil. They were not wrong.

I’ve got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom.

How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child!

Pessimism never won any battle.

My lyrics are generated by various peculiar processes. Very random and similar to automatic writing.

I do not think that there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature.

Do your job. Do it the best you can. Do it right, because somebody, sometimes your best friend, is waiting for you to screw up so she can take your place.

I have my permanent muses and my muses of the moment.

No idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered with a searching but at the same time a steady eye.

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

Whatever is on the page is what I’m married to. I’m very prepared. I’m a thespian. I don’t like to improv. I don’t like to go off course ‚cause I think that’s where stuff happens. When you stick to the material ‚cause it’s written so well, that’s where the magic happens.