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.

Meditation has been a loyal friend to me. It has helped me write my books.

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

We are never defeated unless we give up on God.

The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.

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.

Years ago I met Richard Burton in Port Talbot, my home town, and afterwards he passed in his car with his wife, and I thought, ‚I want to get out and become like him‘. Not because of Wales, because I love Wales, but because I was so limited as a child at school and so bereft and lonely, and I thought becoming an actor would do that.

Your decision to be, have and do something out of ordinary entails facing difficulties that are out of the ordinary as well. Sometimes your greatest asset is simply your ability to stay with it longer than anyone else.

Don’t be a writer; it’s a terrible way to live your life. There’s nothing to be gained from it but poverty and obscurity and solitude. So if you have a taste for all those things, which means that you really are burning to do it, then go ahead and do it. But don’t expect anything from anybody.

Since day one, since the first time I touched the pen, I wanted to be the best at what I do.

I never expect to lose. Even when I’m the underdog, I still prepare a victory speech.

I don’t see how people are comfortable with seeing other people be great. You can be happy for anybody, but what is your excuse to not want to be great? These people are great because they just say, ‚I’ma do that,‘ and they do it. That’s it. There’s no scientifical process.

Where would I be without baseball? Who am I without baseball?

The companies that work are the ones that people really care about and have a vision for the world so do something you like.

My music will go on forever. Maybe it’s a fool say that, but when me know facts me can say facts. My music will go on forever.

Above everything else I’ve done, I’ve always said I’ve had more guts than I’ve got talent.

Working hard is very important. You’re not going to get anywhere without working extremely hard.

I’m a writer first and a singer second.

It sounds simple telling people to work hard and never quit, but to really execute and demonstrate those principles takes discipline and faith. Those are the two factors that I believe separate the good from the great, the successes from the failures.

I figured that if I said it enough, I would convince the world that I really was the greatest.

Music is in my DNA!

If you have passion, there is no need for excuses because your enthusiasm will trump any negative reasoning you might come up with. Enthusiasm makes excuses a nonissue.

I’d have stopped writing years ago if it were for the money.

Whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do it well; whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself completely; in great aims and in small I have always thoroughly been in earnest.

Lots of young players have triumphed at United, so why can’t it happen to me? I’m not worried I’m young – it’s an incentive to do the best I can.

Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are awake, intentionally. So I get up early in the morning, 4 o’clock, and I sit at my desk and what I do is just dream. After three or four hours, that’s enough. In the afternoon, I run. The next day, the dream will continue.

One is lucky to be born in a place where no one is doing it, because then you can say, ‚Well, obviously I can write better than everyone else in high school.‘ You have no idea of the competition.

It is the set of the sails, not the direction of the wind that determines which way we will go.

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.

I stay out of politics because if I begin thinking too much about politics, I’ll probably… drop writing children’s books and become a political cartoonist again.

Once I’ve written something it does tend to run away from me. I don’t seem to have any part of it – it’s no longer my piece of writing.

There’s an ecstatic side to writing. It’s like jazz. It just has a life.

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.

We loved with a love that was more than love.

Take off your bedroom slippers. Put on your marching shoes,‘ he said, his voice rising as applause and cheers mounted. ‚Shake it off. Stop complainin‘. Stop grumblin‘. Stop cryin‘. We are going to press on. We have work to do.

My mother was determined to make us independent. When I was four years old, she stopped the car a few miles from our house and made me find my own way home across the fields. I got hopelessly lost.

Poetry comes from the highest happiness or the deepest sorrow.

I don’t do research. I never have.

The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.

May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air.

I have met 18 million youth, and each wants to be unique.

The best football is always about expression of emotion. Always.

What kind of people do they think we are? Is it possible they do not realize that we shall never cease to persevere against them until they have been taught a lesson which they and the world will never forget?

For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.

If I’m the people’s poet, then I ought to be in people’s hands – and, I hope, in their heart.

A man is not finished when he is defeated. He is finished when he quits.

America is the student who defies the odds to become the first in a family to go to college – the citizen who defies the cynics and goes out there and votes – the young person who comes out of the shadows to demand the right to dream. That’s what America is about.

All I wanted to do was write – at the time, poems, and prose, too. I guess my ambition was simply to make money however I could to keep myself going in some modest way, and I didn’t need much, I was unmarried at the time, no children.

I am the freest author in the world.

I’ve always wanted to make a career in the arts, and I think that my only hope at doing that is to make it more about the work.

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

I have no interest in Shakespeare and all that British nonsense… I just wanted to get famous and all the rest is hogwash.

I was the kid that was the 199th pick that never had the body for it. People didn’t think I’d play one year in the NFL, and now I’m going on my 17th year.

Yet, it is true, poetry is delicious; the best prose is that which is most full of poetry.

To sit back hoping that someday, some way, someone will make things right is to go on feeding the crocodile, hoping he will eat you last – but eat you he will.

I love music, and after my first experience with movies, I can’t wait to do more.

Science is not only a disciple of reason but, also, one of romance and passion.

I have my favorite cat, who is my paperweight, on my desk while I am writing.

When ideas fail, words come in very handy.

The courage we desire and prize is not the courage to die decently, but to live manfully.

No one has ever drowned in sweat.