I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library, and it’s better than college. People should educate themselves – you can get a complete education for no money. At the end of 10 years, I had read every book in the library and I’d written a thousand stories.

Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before.

The first time you say something, it’s heard. The second time, it’s recognized, and the third time it’s learned.

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.

The answer to all writing, to any career for that matter, is love.

I think the definition of a book is changing.

Teachers can change lives with just the right mix of chalk and challenges.

The more man meditates upon good thoughts, the better will be his world and the world at large.

First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.

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

As a leader, the first person I need to lead is me. The first person that I should try to change is me.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.

The aim of a college education is to teach you to know a good man when you see one.

I cannot read a single word of the Hindoos without being elevated.

Practice yourself, for heaven’s sake in little things, and then proceed to greater.

Whatever the reviewers feel about ‚The Casual Vacancy‘, it is what I wanted it to be, and you can’t say fairer than that as a writer.

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.

I think I belong to America’s last generation of novelists. Novelists will come one by one from now on, not in seeming families, and will perhaps write only one or two novels, and let it go at that.

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 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.

I give opinions, not advice.

I add this, that rational ability without education has oftener raised man to glory and virtue, than education without natural ability.

I wasn’t that great a chef, and I don’t think I’m that great a writer.

I just want to be just as everyone else. I want to educate myself and be just like a normal teenager.

The mind of a 19-year-old is very different from the mind of a 26-year-old. You grow. You get into better relationships. You experience more, meet more people, better people. But when you’re in a dark hole at an earlier point in your life – you write about the mindset you’re in at that moment.

It would be an egregious mistake to ever refer to me in the same breath as most of the people I write about.

At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.

I think history is collective memories. In writing, I’m using my own memory, and I’m using my collective memory.

Until we’re educating every kid in a fantastic way, until every inner city is cleaned up, there is no shortage of things to do.

Education forms the common mind. Just as the twig is bent, the tree’s inclined.

What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.

I read a lot. I enjoy reading a lot.

Poetry and lyrics are very similar. Making words bounce off a page.

I’ve never had writer’s block.

Some people will never learn anything, for this reason, because they understand everything too soon.

A book worth reading is worth buying.

Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy – which many believe goes hand in hand with it – will be dead as well.

One must steer, not talk.

Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we, as a people, can be engaged in.

The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately… you usually don’t use it at all. It uses you.

Intelligent people should learn from their experiences. With people on the street, the bad experience has beaten them.

It is reasonable to have perfection in our eye that we may always advance toward it, though we know it can never be reached.

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.

Any reading not of a vicious species must be a good substitute for the amusements too apt to fill up the leisure of the labouring classes.

For a highly motivated learner, it’s not like knowledge is secret and somehow the Internet made it not secret. It just made knowledge easy to find. If you’re a motivated enough learner, books are pretty good.

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.

I don’t write with a machine. I write with a pen and a paper, which is what is most comfortable for me.

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.

The most important part of education is proper training in the nursery.

A word after a word after a word is power.

No man is free who is not master of himself.

I think I should learn French and be a better cook – basic, really good life stuff.

What a man can be, he must be. This need we call self-actualization.

Naturally, my stories are about women – I’m a woman. I don’t know what the term is for men who write mostly about men. I’m not always sure what is meant by ‚feminist.‘ In the beginning, I used to say, ‚Well, of course I’m a feminist.‘ But if it means that I follow a kind of feminist theory, or know anything about it, then I’m not.

Educators take something simple and make it complicated. Communicators take something complicated and make it simple.

Dressing up is a bore. At a certain age, you decorate yourself to attract the opposite sex, and at a certain age, I did that. But I’m past that age.

I grew up with my career being thrust upon me. It took me a long time to believe that I could do more than that one aspect of our business.

Military school was great and especially great for leadership and then I spent two years in Vietnam.

What we think determines what happens to us, so if we want to change our lives, we need to stretch our minds.

Whatever you cannot understand, you cannot possess.

Perhaps if you are in support functions waiting on the warfighters to spell out the specifics of what you are to do, you can avoid the consequences of not reading. Those who must adapt to overcoming an independent enemy’s will are not allowed that luxury.