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

Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn.

If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write.

It is my desire, in the office of a Christian minister, to do nothing which I cannot do with my whole heart. Having said this, I have said all.

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.

It’s true hard work never killed anybody, but I figure, why take the chance?

Shakespeare didn’t work at all for me.

The best preparation for tomorrow is doing your best today.

Since I have come to America, I am often asked whether my next novel will be set in America. I don’t think it will. I think I will be living in America for some time to come, but while living in America, I would like to write about Japanese society from the outside.

I can remember being home from school with tonsillitis and writing stories in bed to pass the time.

The great fun in my life has been getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter because some new idea has hit me.

I started writing as a child. But I didn’t think of myself actually writing until I was in college. And I had gone to Africa as a sophomore or something – no, maybe junior – and wrote a book of poems. And that was my beginning. I published that book.

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

Van Gogh never made a penny in his entire lifetime. He painted because it was his soul, his excitement. It was what aligned him with his Source of being. It’s the same with me and writing.

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.

Modern poets talk against business, poor things, but all of us write for money. Beginners are subjected to trial by market.

Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.

If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.

It’s a fact that more people watch television and get their information that way than read books. I find new technology and new ways of communication very exciting and would like to do more in this field.

Sometimes I’ve called writing a disease. If so, I’m glad that it caught me.

We have a great group of guys that really sacrifice every night, care about each other, and try to play the right away.

It’s hard work making movies. It’s like being a doctor: you work long hours, very hard hours, and it’s emotional, tense work. If you don’t really love it, then it ain’t worth it.

I am the freest author in the world.

My advice is this. For Christ’s sake, don’t write a book that is suitable for a kid of 12 years old, because the kids who read who are 12 years old are reading books for adults. I read all of the James Bond books when I was about 11, which was approximately the right time to read James Bond books.

Books are sharks… because sharks have been around for a very long time. There were sharks before there were dinosaurs, and the reason sharks are still in the ocean is that nothing is better at being a shark than a shark.

Financial freedom is available to those who learn about it and work for it.

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.

Diligence is the mother of good luck.

Books! I dunno if I ever told you this, but books are the greatest gift one person can give another.

In books lies the soul of the whole past time.

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.

People think you have to go through something to write about it, and you absolutely do not. You can write about, like, a shoe. It’s a story.

We’re just enthusiastic about what we do.

All good books have one thing in common – they are truer than if they had really happened.

The bat is not a toy, it’s a weapon. It gives me everything in life, which helps me to do everything on the field.

I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong.

‚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.

All that mankind has done, thought or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.

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.

I mean, what would I be doing if I couldn’t write? But that fortunately hasn’t proved to be the case and I can read any day. I still read a lot, and I can write any day, but much more slowly and fewer words.

I love story songs because I’ve always loved books.

No one has ever drowned in sweat.

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

I am not a fan of books.

What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.

When I was young, I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. So I did ten times more work.

Power is my mistress. I have worked too hard at her conquest to allow anyone to take her away from me.

I just write what I wanted to write. I write what amuses me. It’s totally for myself. I never in my wildest dreams expected this popularity.

I no longer feel attracted to the well-made novel. I want to write the story that will zero in and give you intense, but not connected, moments of experience. I guess that’s the way I see life. People remake themselves bit by bit and do things they don’t understand.

What happens if you stick at something long enough, and study it for so long, you have a different kind of intelligence. It’s not an intellectual thing. It’s almost like an animal intelligence. I call it our form of instinct, almost how a lion knows exactly where its prey is.

No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.

Reading and writing are connected. I learned to read very early so I could read the comics, which I then started to draw.

They say it is the first step that costs the effort. I do not find it so. I am sure I could write unlimited ‚first chapters‘. I have indeed written many.

The pen is mightier than the sword if the sword is very short, and the pen is very sharp.

The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter.

When I write, I write about my surroundings. Sometimes it’s light, and sometimes it gets very dark.

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

I never took a day off in my twenties. Not one. And I’m still fanatical, but now I’m a little less fanatical.

I have written a book. This will come as quite a shock to some. They didn’t think I could read, much less write.

If I am a cup maker, I’m interested in making the best cup I possibly can. My effort goes into that cup, not what people think about it.

To Marines, love of liberty is not an empty phrase… Rather, it’s displayed by blood, sweat, and tears for the fallen.