I like sitting and writing with my buddies.

Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn’t.

Beware the hobby that eats.

The day when I am no more than a writer I shall cease to be a writer.

We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.

When you’re writing a novel, you don’t want the reader to come out of it voting yes or no to some question. Life is more complicated than that. Reality simply consists of different points of view.

We are motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is the more he is inspired by glory. The very philosophers themselves, even in those books which they write in contempt of glory, inscribe their names.

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

I don’t think I’d ever make an album of just covers because I love writing my own music.

I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.

That’s the most terrible thing about being an author – standing there at your mother’s funeral, but you don’t switch the author off. So your own innermost thoughts are grist for the mill. Who was it said – one of the famous lady novelists – ‚unhappy is the family that contains an author‘?

In many ways, I’ve been writing personal stories all my life.

I don’t do research. I never have.

It’s pretty intense writing about my own life, my own struggles.

It is far better to be alone, than to be in bad company.

The first stories I wrote when I was 12 were about Mars and landing on Mars.

Many people tell me that they don ‚t know what to feel when they finish one of my books because the story was dark, or complicated, or strange. But while they were reading it, they were inside my world and they were happy. That’s good.

It is healthier, in any case, to write for the adults one’s children will become than for the children one’s ‚mature‘ critics often are.

Writing is good, thinking is better. Cleverness is good, patience is better.

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.

The first real thought that I had of something that I might do was to write for car magazines, because I always had a car thing.

Somebody just back of you while you are fishing is as bad as someone looking over your shoulder while you write a letter to your girl.

I guess, taking away all the theatrics or the costuming and the outer layers of what I do, I’m a writer… I write.

The short words are best, and the old words are the best of all.

I’m happy to be a writer – of prose, poetry, every kind of writing. Every person in the world who isn’t a recluse, hermit or mute uses words. I know of no other art form that we always use.

When I write, I can shake off all my cares.

No book includes the entire world. It’s limited. And so it doesn’t seem like an aesthetic compromise to have to do that. There’s so much other material to write about.

One great use of words is to hide our thoughts.

I don’t think of myself as an artist. I’m just a guy who can write.

You know, as a writer, I’m more of a listener than a writer, cuz if I hear something I will write it down.

The difference is slight, to the influence of an author, whether he is read by five hundred readers, or by five hundred thousand; if he can select the five hundred, he reaches the five hundred thousand.

All fiction is about people, unless it’s about rabbits pretending to be people. It’s all essentially characters in action, which means characters moving through time and changes taking place, and that’s what we call ‚the plot‘.

If you feel that there’s the author and then the character, then the book is not working. People have a habit of identifying the author with the narrator, and you can’t, obviously, be all of the narrators in all of your books, or else you’d be a very strange person indeed.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.

I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence.

‚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.

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 will carry on writing, to be sure. But I don’t know if I would want to publish again after Harry Potter.

I don’t tell anyone how to write and no one tells me.

I’m always just surprised when someone writes something about me.

I was enjoying myself writing, because I don’t know what’s going to happen when I take a ride around that corner. You don’t know at all what you’re going to find there. That can be thrilling when you read a book, especially when you’re a kid and you’re reading stories.

If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s gathering people together to do something fun.

As far as I’m concerned, I’m a writer who’s writing books, and therefore, I don’t want to die. You’d miss the end of the book wouldn’t you? You can’t die with an unfinished book.

I know some people might think it odd – unworthy even – for me to have written a cookbook, but I make no apologies. The U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins thought I had demeaned myself by writing poetry for Hallmark Cards, but I am the people’s poet so I write for the people.

It’s not easy to define poetry.

Like anything else that happens on its own, the act of writing is beyond currency. Money is great stuff to have, but when it comes to the act of creation, the best thing is not to think of money too much. It constipates the whole process.

Dickens is one of those authors who are well worth stealing.

Find enough clever things to say, and you’re a Prime Minister; write them down and you’re a Shakespeare.

Having listened to great songwriters like James Taylor and Carole King, I felt there was nothing new that was coming out that really represented me and the way I felt. So I started writing my own stuff.

Excessive literary production is a social offense.

It was very lucky for me as a writer that I studied the physical sciences rather than English. I wrote for my own amusement. There was no kindly English professor to tell me for my own good how awful my writing really was. And there was no professor with the power to order me what to read, either.

I didn’t want to be a writer, but I became one. And now I have many readers, in many countries. I think that’s a miracle. So I think I have to be humble regarding this ability. I’m proud of it and I enjoy it, and it is strange to say it this way, but I respect it.

You’re not going to make Hemingway better by adding animations.

There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern.

No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.

I’m most suspicious of scripts that have a lot of stage direction at the top of the page… sunrise over the desert and masses of… a whole essay before you get to the dialogue.

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

I’ve been asked this question so many times, do you feel you need to write a book for adults? No, I don’t need to write a book for adults.

I notice that my characters go out to dinner and have fun and take these great trips, but I spend so much time on their lives, I don’t have much of a personal life of my own. I have to sort of remember to fill out that little notebook on me.